Former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency Tom Homan essentially shrugged off the infamous ProPublica tape of crying migrant children separated from their parents by US officials, as he was played the audio recording during a PBS interview.

“When you heard the tape, that ProPublica published of the children waling, what was your reaction?” Asked PBS correspondent Martin Smith to the ex-ICE chief, who claimed he “didn’t hear the tape” and said “I don’t need to hear children cry.”

“Can I play it for you?” Smith said.

“It is a young girl who asked to call her aunt,” he continued, describing the content of the recording. “How can you not condemn that?”

Homan responded by chalking the incident up to just one many “terrible things” he’s seen in his 34 years of law enforcement, but added that “we have to address the border.”

“Do you not sympathize with their situation?” Pressed Smith.

“Absolutely. I’m a parent. It is sad,” responded Homan. “But when a government chooses to enforce the law and they separate the parents being prosecuted, just like every U.S. Citizen, person in this country is separated when they’re arrested, people want a different set of rules for an illegal alien.”

During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe describing the interview with Homan, Smith described the former ICE director’s views in the following comments:

“He takes a very simple approach to this. It was abundantly clear after talking to him that he sees this as a simple case of there’s a law about how you legally enter the country and he’s going to enforce it. And the president has accepted that kind of approach to this. You know, if you want to have a humane process of deciding who can come and who deserves to come, who is fleeing violence and needs asylum, you have to have judges. You have to have a robust asylum process. The president says he doesn’t want judges. Well, that’s what judges are for — to judge whether or not someone has a decent case.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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