Rick Santorum Calls 1,500 Missing Migrant Children 'Hyperbole to Try to Create an Issue'

DANA BASH (HOST): That was Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcing the new policy of the Trump administration to separate families caught crossing the border.

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BASH: This is an unintended consequence of tough on immigration policies?

RICK SANTORUM (CNN COMMENTATOR): I don't think it is. I think this is a process that's been going on a long time. What happens is these children come into detention. There is a vetting process of who the children are assigned to. It's not just 1,400 children it's a much larger group of kids. And they are assigned to sponsors in this country who go through a process to be able to qualify to be sponsors. These children are placed in them. What happened is that, again, thousands more than the 1,500 you're talking about that they follow up with a lot of these -- they follow up to find out where the children are and how they are doing. And, what they found is that 1,500 of them, somehow the sponsors and the kids sort of, are off the radar. They haven't checked in. They haven't been able to find them. Now, the reality is a lot of these sponsors are in many cases have -- they've been checked out but they may have other reasons for not communicating or dropping off the system. So this isn't what we've lost these kids. No, they were placed in vetted homes and for some reason or another these parents are not communicating --

PATTI SOLIS DOYLE: If they are not lost, where are they? Where are they if they're not lost? 

SANTORUM: The question is they haven't had communication with these previously vetted sponsors. Does that mean that they are lost? No, that means that there is a process that's going on right now to try to find why these sponsors haven't checked back in to give us our location. But, the idea that 100% of the sponsors are going to check in, of course, that's never going to the case. There is always gonna be a problem. People move. They don't feel, "Oh we don't have to check in anymore. We've gone some place else." So, the idea that they're "lost" I think is an over estimate -- is hyperbole to try to create an issue where I don't really think there is one, other than the fact that the bureaucracy, surprise, surprise, doesn't work very well.