Trump campaign spokesperson claims parents of children separated at US border do not want them back

'The fact is it's not as simple as you make it sound or Joe Biden made it sound on the stage last night,' Tim Murtaugh claims

The Trump campaign’s communications director has claimed that the reason some migrant families separated at the US border by the administration have not been reunited, is because the parents do not want their children back

Earlier this week, it was widely reported that the federal government has been unable to locate the parents of 545 children who were separated from the rest of their families after they crossed the US border.

Lawyers have been unable to find the parents of the children, after the majority of families were deported back to Central America, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

A court filing from ACLU showed that they have only made contact with parents of 550 children out of the close to 1,000 families separated at the border in 2017, according to NBC News.

Speaking on CNN’s New Day on Friday morning, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said: “It’s a regrettable situation, certainly,” but claimed the problem is more complicated for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) than has been reported, according to Politico.

“The fact is it's not as simple as you make it sound or Joe Biden made it sound on the stage last night to locate the parents who are in other countries,” Mr Murtagh said.

“And when they do locate them, it has been DHS’ experience that in many cases the parents do not want the children returned,” he added.

Later on in the interview he made the claims again to host John Berman, saying: “You have to locate the parents and when they are located in these other countries in many cases, John, the parents do not want the children sent back to them in their home countries.”

In a statement to Politico, DHS spokesman Chase Jennings said that the agency “has taken every step to facilitate reunification of these families where the parents wanted such reunification to occur”.

He added: “The simple fact is this: after contact has been made with the parents to reunited them with their children, many parents have refused.” 

However, the more than 500 parents separated from their children at the border have not been contacted by the steering committee appointed to the task, meaning that they do not know the families’ preference.

During the final presidential debate between president Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden on Thursday evening, the pair clashed over the reports.

Mr Biden said that the children have been left in limbo by the Trump administration, and that the separation of the families is “criminal”.

He added: “Parents were ripped — their kids were ripped from their arms and separated, and now they cannot find over 500 of sets of those parents and those kids are alone [with] nowhere to go. Nowhere to go.”

President Trump responded by mentioning immigration policy under the Obama administration, in which Mr Biden was vice president.

He criticised the Obama administration for constructing detention centres for undocumented migrants to the US, and asked the Democratic candidate repeatedly: “Who made the cages?”

The Trump administration was responsible for the now-suspended policy that separated thousands of children from their parents at the border. The Obama administration first built the “cages” to temporarily hold the migrant children. 

“They are so well taken care of,” the president then claimed. “They are in facilities that are so clean.”

Mr Biden said the Obama administration’s handling of immigration was “a mistake,” and added: “It took too long to get it right. I’ll be president of the United States, not vice president of the United States.”