Rep. Mike Rogers completely ignores the fact that the reason these children are fleeing to the United States is because they're running from the gangs and drug cartels in their home countries.
July 13, 2014

I've heard Republicans twist themselves into knots before when it comes to their stance on our immigration policies, but this has to be one of the more bizarre things I've heard from any of them in a while. Rep. Mike Rogers decided to do a little more fearmongering on this Sunday's Meet the Press and told host David Gregory that the real threat to these kids flooding in from Central America is that they're being recruited into gangs on the way up to the United States.

Rogers managed to completely ignore that all of the items he laid out here are why they're fleeing their home countries in the first place.

GREGORY: The majority of them have to go back home is your point?

ROGERS: Think about what we're doing. This isn't a walk in the park to get from El Salvador, Honduras into the United States. These are criminal gangs. These are organized criminal gangs. These kids are subject to sexual exploitation. They're subject to drug exposure. Some of them are being recruited or pressed into gangs along the way. We're losing these kids along the way. And imagine the experience...

GREGORY: Well, isn't that the point? Why then turn them away? Do you have to come up with a process where we can safely return them?

ROGERS: No, no. We can safely get them home. The problem is by encouraging the behavior that you see and not stopping this attitude, then it's okay...

GREGORY: Is it fair to say the president is somehow encouraging them to come?

ROGERS: The policy on the border is certainly encouraging this behavior. If I believe and I'm in El Salvador or somewhere else that I can pay a criminal gang, think of that, to take my children through some very dangerous circumstances to get to the United States and then they're going to open up with loving arms and keep those kids, you're encouraging that behavior. And right now there are...

GREGORY: But that goes back to the 2008 law, right?

ROGERS: No, I disagree. Even Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said that's just not right. That's a wrong interpretation of his authority to get those kids back home safely and humanely.

Again, think about it, now all our command energy is on this, so all the border folks are trying to figure this out and how to put them around the rest of the country. That time, that energy is better spent trying to get them back home.

And it's better for the children. You don't want kids exposed to this sex trafficking, drug use and again some of those kids are being recruited for gang use, press gang type activities in these organizations all on that route up to the United States.

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