Former Republican National Committee chairman and MS NOW anchor Michael Steele slammed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's recent call for a "recalibration" of Immigration and Customs Enforcement strategy, accusing him of enabling the very environment that let ICE run wild in the first place by building a massive child detention facility for them.
"I want to play Greg Abbott's response because right now he thinks there needs to be a recalibration. I wonder why," said Steele, speaking with Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, who is running for the Democratic nomination to run against Abbott this year. "Let's listen to what he had to say."
"We need to have respect for law enforcement officers in the country. ICE, they are law enforcement officers," said Abbott in the clip. "And so they, being the White House, need to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that that respect is going to be instilled. And that's — that's not an easy task, especially under the current circumstances. But I know that they're working on a game plan to make sure that they are going to, let's say, recalibrate and maybe work from a different direction to ensure that they get back to what they wanted to do to begin with, and that is to remove people from the country who are here illegally."
"Alphabet soup of BS, because they wouldn't — if you didn't build a facility in the first place, if you didn't countenance the crazy coming out of the White House as the governor of a freestanding state and said, no, we're not going to play this game, we're not going to treat immigrants this way, we're not going to treat children this way. That's the recalibration, Governor," said Steele.
Hinojosa agreed.
"What is happening in Texas and happening across this country, but mostly in Texas, is that now we have the private prisons who are making money off every person that is being detained, even children, right?" she said. "So now there are these profit motives that are driving these raids. They're also driving the incarceration of our children and our families. Greg Abbott allowed for the licensing of these children and their parents, the only state in the union that allows this. This happened after he received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from these private prisons. Now they're talking about expanding detention centers and converting, in fact, an Amazon warehouse to store and warehouse human beings."
"That is the corrupt reality that we are dealing with in Texas," she continued. "It is sick. And let me tell you right now, when we were at that press conference hearing the story of these children, it was all anybody could do but to keep a dry eye. It is awful what is happening to these children."