There are some "false narratives" floating around about the Trump administration's rule on holding migrant families for longer than the 20 days allowed through the 1997 Flores agreement, particularly when it comes to complaints that the new plan is "cruel," Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, said Monday.
It is cruel, he said that "Congress failed to do their job to fix the loopholes in the immigration system and stop these individuals from risking their lives," Morgan told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"What this new regulation does is they are going to hold you not indefinitely, just long enough to go through the immigration process, which in past history has shown between 40-60 days."
He said the rule will be a "game-changer," in that it will deter migrants from using children as a "passport" to enter the United States.
"We have to go back to the previous administration in 2014, 15, and 16 when the family residential centers were actually created under then-secretary Jeh Johnson, and when families were held together," said Morgan. "We saw the numbers drastically go down. Because you were removing that incentive."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke out about the plan, calling it child abuse, but Morgan said that is not true, as cartels and smugglers who "don't care a thing" about the children are taking advantage of them.
The rule will most likely face a legal battle, said Morgan, but care was taken to exceed the level of care called for in the Flores agreement, so he feels "very strongly" the administration will win in the case.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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