The father of a little girl shown in a viral video crying after he was arrested during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at a Mississippi food processing plant last week, and others like him, are at fault for their children's dire situations, Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence says in an interview airing Tuesday. 

"I don't think I would speak to the little girl," Albence told NBC News' Gabe Gutierrez in an interview for "NBC Nightly News" after he was shown a copy of the video.

"I would speak to the parents, and I would speak to the community at large . . . The parents or the individuals that are breaking the law are ultimately the ones that are responsible for placing their children in this situation."

Albence added he is a parent and so are most ICE agents and officers, and often the "most difficult things that we have to do" is enforce laws that can result in the separation of parents from their children.

"Every law enforcement officer has to deal with that at some point in their career," Albence told Gutierrez in the first network interview after the raids. "Many officers, on a daily basis, when an officer goes in to arrest somebody for a crime of domestic violence, one of those children in there is going to be crying."

He insisted ICE officials "conduct operations with professionalism, with compassion, and with humanity. And we try our best to minimalize the impact on the innocent people of the situation."

Still, ICE agents must enforce laws, just as every law enforcement agency does, "against the individuals who have broken it," Albence said.

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