CNN panel goes ballistic as Rick Santorum dismisses 1,500 missing immigrant kids with 'we lose people all the time'

Former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum got it from all sides on Sunday morning after he attempted to dismiss reports that immigration officials can't account for close to 1,500 immigrant children who were ripped from their parents, saying that is how the system sometimes works and it happens all the time.

Sitting on a CNN panel with State of the Union host Dana Bash, the Pennsylvania Republican was asked about the report and seemed to have no sympathy for the parents or their children, saying it is all part of the "process," after former Hillary Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle ripped into the President Donald Trump's  immigration policies that have allowed it.

"It is unspeakably cruel," Solis Doyle passionately explained. "The parents are coming with their children because they are trying to escape some horror, they are coming to save their kids and their children are being torn away. Now we are finding that our government has lost these children? Where are the kids? As a mom I am -- I just can't think about a child, a 4 year old in a different country with strangers and now vulnerable to human trafficking and abuse -- and there is nothing that these parents can do."

Santorum, for his part, disregarded the emotional toll.

"I think this is a process going on a long time," the conservative Republican explained. "The children come into detention -- there is a vetting process of who the children are assigned to. It is 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 and the children are placed in them."

"What happened -- thousands more than the 1,500 you are 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," he continued. "They found that 1,500 of them, somehow the sponsors and the kids fell off the radar. They haven't checked in and they haven't been able to find them. The reality is a lot of the sponsors in many cases have been checked out but they may have other reasons for not communicating or dropping off the system."

"The idea that they are lost is hyperbole to create an issue where I don't think there is one," he claimed which set Solis Doyle off.

"If you think 1,500 children being lost is not an issue then there is something definitely wrong!" she shot back.

"There are logical explanations," Santorum parried. "Again, we are talking about a government system. We will sit here forever and tell you how inadequate a lot of these government agencies are at doing a lot of things. We lose people all the time."

Santorum then attempted to blame the children’s immigrant parents, saying they “put them at risk,” causing everyone on the panel -- including conservative Bill Kristol and progressive advocate Nina Turner -- to erupt and talk over him as Bash lost control.

You can watch the video below via CNN: