Fox's Brian Kilmeade defends indefinite family detention as “the most humane thing possible”
Kilmeade also denies Trump is responsible for family separation: “It's the Central American countries that are the instrument of separation”
Published
Citation
From the August 23 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
GERALDO RIVERA (FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT-AT-LARGE): I think that the one thing we have to guard against, no matter what, is that the Trump administration cannot be the administration of child abuse. The Republican Party cannot stand --
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): But they're not, Geraldo.
RIVERA: -- for the separation of children from their parents. You know, we have been, Brian. And, you know, the trouble that the president got in last year was for a very real reason.
KILMEADE: But not here. Let's just talk about this, though. Let's talk about this. This is absolutely necessary. This is the most humane thing possible.
RIVERA: Is it really?
KILMEADE: Yes.
RIVERA: To keep children detained, you know, even with their parents, to keep them locked up in a family prison?
[CROSSTALK]
KILMEADE: The amount of illegals coming across is up 450%. They're not in prisons.
RIVERA: It will never stand the scrutiny of the federal courts, Brian. It will never stand the scrutiny --
KILMEADE: They're using the system.
RIVERA: You have the Flores agreement that was hammered out over years in terms of negotiation. They tried to get the fairest kind of equilibrium they possibly could, and this is what they came --
KILMEADE: But it's not. It's a magnet of all of Central America -- Geraldo, it's magnet for all of Central America to come here with families, many of which, one in five aren't the right families. And then they get released to the interior.
...
RIVERA: You know, there are ways to strengthen the nonconfinement alternatives, but we -- the one thing we cannot be perceived to be throughout the world is the abusers of migrant children.
KILMEADE: Well, that's for simple-minded people.
...
RIVERA: You don't want the United States to be the instrument of separation.
[CROSSTALK]
KILMEADE: Instrument of -- it's the Central American countries that are the instrument of separation.