LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): This is how your opponents, [Attorney] General Sessions, are demagoguing this issue. Let's listen.
[...]
Nazi Germany, concentration camps, human rights violations. Laura Bush has weighed in. Michelle Obama, Rosalynn Carter, you've got all of the first ladies, going back to Eleanor Roosevelt, she's apparently weighed in as well. General Sessions, what's going on here?
JEFF SESSIONS: Well, it's a real exaggeration, of course. In Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country. But this is a serious matter. We need to think it through, be rational and thoughtful about it. We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it, but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit, and what they think is their families' benefit, is not a basis for a claim of asylum -- but, they can make that claim, we will process it, and I will review the situation and make a decision.
Those children, if the parent brings them across the border in an unlawful area, and the parent is deported, they will take the children home with them. That is true. If the parent claims asylum and is allowed to stay here, then the children stay here also, and they're kept in Health and Human Services' custody.
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INGRAHAM: Is it a deterrent, sir?
SESSIONS: Well, it does have --
INGRAHAM: Are you considering this a deterrent?
SESSIONS: I see that the fact that no one was being prosecuted for this as a factor in a five-fold increase in four years in this kind of illegal immigration. So, yes, I -- hopefully people will get the message and come through the border at the port of entry, and not break across the border unlawfully.
