Steve King Defends Child Detention Centers

By Eric Garcia

Posted June 19, 2018 at 8:39am

Republican Rep. Steve King defended the detention facilities where child migrants are being held at the border after being separated from their parents.

The Iowa congressman was asked by TMZ about Democrats calling detention facilities “concentration camps” and said he had been down to one of the facilities in 2014 that was a retrofitted warehouse.

“They did set up chain link panels inside to divide people so they could keep boys away from girls,” he said. “But they also air-conditioned that whole building and they had coaches in there. They were playing soccer.”

King also pointed out that he visited in 2014 during the Obama administration.

“But it was not a cage, it was a great big area,” King said. “And they just show the picture through the chain link.”

Watch: Nielsen Calls On Congress to Address Immigrant Family Separation

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When asked about how the Bible could support this, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last week, King replied, “I don’t find any prohibition to this.”

“These are children that are cared for with better care than they get in their home country,” he said. “They get a warm and a comfortable place to sleep, they get medical care like a lot of kids in this country don’t get, they get three squares a day. They get exercise fresh air. So I don’t know how you could ask for more than that.”

King has in the past been criticized for racist remarks, like saying “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies” when he met with Dutch nationalist and Islamophobe Geert Wilders.

Last week, King retweeted Mark Collett, who has said he admires Adolf Hitler.

Collett’s tweet said 65 percent of Italians younger than 35 oppose mass migration. King quoted the tweet by saying “Europe is waking up…Will America…in time?”