Rather than defending the conditions at overcrowded migrant detention centers alond the southern border, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham decided to take another stance, saying he doesn’t “care” if migrants “have to stay in those facilities for 400 days.”
Following a tour of two facilities in Texas alongside Vice President Pence, Graham spoke with Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo when he made the comments.
“I don’t care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days, we’re not going to let those men go that I saw,” he said. “It would be dangerous.”
The Pence tour came on the heels criticisms and allegations of human rights abuses at the facilities.
As The Guardian reported, tours of the facilities had been undertaken by human rights lawyers and members of Congress including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joaquin Castro.
At a facility in El Paso, Ocasio-Cortez says CBP officers encouraged detained women to “drink out of the toilet.” Castro added that detainees slept on the floor, had been separated from their children, many had not bathed for 15 days, and some had not received necessary medications.
Overcrowding and underfunding of the facilities aren’t the only concerns brought up by Ocasio-Cortez.
She also said that migrants detained there told her the CBP officers at the facility were abusing them.
“After I forced myself into a cell w/ women & began speaking to them, one of them described their treatment at the hands of the officers as ‘psychological warfare’ – waking them up at odd hours for no reason, calling them wh*res, etc. Tell me what about that is due to a lack of funding?” she tweeted .
As far back as May, border agents at some facilities were arming themselves in fear of riots due to the conditions migrants were subjected to.
According to NBC News , a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, officers were worried about unrest due to the overcrowding.
At one facility, a cell intended to hold 35 was holding 155 adult men, with only one toilet and sink. The report also noted outbreaks of lice, flu, chickenpox, and scabies.
The Trump administration pushed back against such descriptions, saying the claims were “unsubstantiated.”
The administration has blamed backlogs at facilities run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Health and Human Services that are designed to hold migrants for more than 72 hours.
CBP is not supposed to hold anyone for longer than 72 hours, but as of May 7, more than 500 of the 756 immigrants observed by inspectors had been there for longer.
Congress has approved $4.6 billion in emergency funding for the border.
Although she faced some backlash from her fellow Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “reluctantly” approved a Senate bill without changes to the legislation “to get resources to the children fastest,” CNN reported.
Still, the Trump administration tried to do some damage control over the reports of “horrifying conditions” with the Pence tour.
On a pre-arranged tour of facilities in Donna and McAllen, Texas, reporters and members of Congress including Graham were taken to both a “newer and relatively clean” facility for children where “many kids told the VP there were being treated well and fed,” and to a “hot, overcrowded, fenced room with no cots for men who weren’t given showers for many days.”
Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey said “The stench was horrendous.”
And Senator Graham seems to be okay with all that.
As he said to Bartiromo, “What I saw was a bunch of people who have been here before, broke the law before, and we’re not going to let them go. I don’t care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days, we’re not going to let those men go, that I saw. It would be dangerous.”
h/t NBC News
