Rep. Tony Gonzales defends conditions at Texas detention center with measles outbreak

Rep. Tony Gonzales said Sunday that the Texas immigration detention center in which 5-year-old Liam Ramos was detained is “nicer than some elementary schools” amid reports of a measles outbreak and criticism of the conditions from immigration activists. 

“The facility in Dilley, I’ve visited there many times,” Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “I’ve visited dozens of facilities. It is a nice facility. It’s a detention facility for people that are in the country illegally that are about to be deported but it is a nice facility. Nicer than some elementary schools.”

Gonzales did not elaborate on the conditions of the detention center, which is located in Dilley, Texas, but called it “nice.” The Dilley facility is the only immigration detention center in the country that holds children and families, and immigration activists have described the conditions as unsafe, according to the Texas Tribune. CBS News has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on this. 

In February, DHS announced that it had halted “all movement” at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center after two inmates had had “active measles infections.”

Gonzales argued that Ramos, who along with his parents entered the United States using the now-defunct CBP One app, would not “qualify for asylum.”

“It breaks my heart,” Gonzales said of the detention of Ramos. “I have a five-year-old at home. I also think, what about that five-year-old U.S. citizen?”

In January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Ramos and his father during the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge,” which has targeted undocumented immigrants in the Minneapolis area, the latest of its immigration crackdowns across the country. Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, were released from custody and returned to Minneapolis. The operation has resulted in the deaths of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Gregory Bovino, the commander-at-large of the Border Patrol who led the operation, has since left Minneapolis.

The Texas Republican said feeling “compassionate” is not a barrier to enforcing immigration laws in a “humane way.” 

“And I think that’s the secret sauce that the administration and Congress must do,” Gonzales said. “Let’s enforce our laws, but let’s do it in a humane way.”

President Trump’s immigration policy, which promised mass deportations, is facing backlash with Democratic candidates making sweeping gains in elections, including in Texas. Texas Democrat Taylor Rehmet and Louisiana Democrat Chasity Verret Martinez defeated their Republican opponents in special state elections in the most recent races, and both in districts that President Trump won by double digits. 

“Very early on, I mentioned, ‘Hey, if we go down this route as a party, we’re not going to be successful,'” Gonzales said. “And we’re seeing some of that with some of these special elections that are happening.”

The administration’s approach to immigration has faced criticism. A recent CBS News poll shows that while 50% of the public support Mr. Trump’s immigration goals, only 37% approve the methods he is using to conduct deportation operations. 

“If you go into a jail and you go cell by cell, that makes a lot more sense to American people than going house by house, going, ‘are you American, a citizen or not?,'” Gonzales said as he urged the administration to “shift” how it is communicating with the public.

As funding for the Department of Homeland Security is set to expire on Friday, Democrats in Congress are demanding several revisions to the agency and how ICE and CBP administer immigration operations. Among them are judicial warrant requirements to enter homes, mandatory body cameras, and displaying IDs.

Gonzales said Congress needs to “work it through.” He said  that he thinks body cameras “make a lot of sense,” but requiring a judicial warrant by judges who “all over the country go beyond their level of authority” to “roadblock” immigration enforcement operations and not keep communities safe.

“Administrative warrants work,” Gonzales said. “I want to give law enforcement every tool they need to go out and apprehend these convicted criminals that are loose in our community. To me, that makes a lot of sense. Why you would want to shackle your own law enforcement from keeping our community safe makes no sense to me.”