WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a press event Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the biblical example of Herod the Great and his mass murder of all the young boys in and near Bethlehem in order to defend the Trump Administration's policy of separating illegal immigrant families at the United States-Mexico border.

Sessions pointed to the account of the slaughter of the infants by the government as a "great example" of a time where everyone involved should have respected the law of the land, "per Romans 13."

"To our church friends out there, I would point you to the biblical hero Herod the Great and the way he separated infants from their families throughout the land," Sessions said. "Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves, as we can see in this account of a crazed ruler using government power to kill infant boys."

"As is very clear from these passages, separating families at the border is totally Bible-based," he concluded.