"You can't break up rat families"

Cuccinelli, an immigration hard-liner nominated this month by President Trump to lead the federal agency that oversees legal immigration, including asylum, made the case while speaking on “Erin Burnett OutFront.” The news anchor asked whether Cuccinelli believed the graphic photo could be compared to the 2015 photo of the 3-year-old Syrian boy who had washed up on a beach, an image that had turned the world’s attention to the anguish confronting refugees trying to reach Europe. Would the photo of this father and daughter become a symbol of the Trump administration’s policies on the border? Burnett asked.

Cuccinelli said no, “in fact the opposite.”

“The reason we have tragedies like that on the border is because that father didn’t wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion and decided to cross the river and not only died but his daughter died tragically as well,” said Cuccinelli, 50. “Until we fix the attractions in our asylum system, people like that father and that child are going to continue to come through a dangerous trip.”

Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia, has long peddled far-right fare, supporting immigration causes that ultimately would land him in the president’s good graces. But his extreme positions have turned off some moderate Republicans. As a state lawmaker in Virginia, Cuccinelli once sponsored a bill that would strip undocumented immigrants’ U.S.-born children of their citizenship. He supported a bill banning undocumented immigrants from attending any state colleges. He has said a D.C. ordinance that doesn’t let animal-control workers kill rats is worse than U.S. immigration policy because, “You can’t break up rat families.”