Mark Morgan, the acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said on Sunday that children's reactions to their parents being d...
Mark Morgan, the acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said on Sunday that children's reactions to their parents being detained during the Mississippi raids, doesn't change the fact that they committed a crime.
'I understand that the girl is upset and I get that. But her father committed a crime,' Morgan told CNN, dismissing a video of a crying 11-year-old girl who was begging for ICE to release her parents.
He said the young girl, Magdalena Gomez Gregorio, saw her mother, who was home, shortly after the viral video of her sobbing was recorded.
'I know it's emotional and I know it's done on purpose to show a picture like that,' Morgan said of the video when speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper over the weekend.
On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a raid on seven different food processing plants in six cities in Mississippi and detained a little less than 700 workers. By Friday, a press release indicated 300 of the 700 undocumented workers had been released 'on humanitarian grounds.'
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security came under scrutiny for failing to notify Child Protective Services or Health and Human Services – the agency that takes in unaccompanied migrant children – of the plans so it made it more difficult for the agencies to respond and take care of the kids whose parents were detained.
In the video, Gregorio plead, 'Government, please put your heart -- let my parents be free with everybody else, please.'
'I need my dad ... mommy,' she said, stuttering and pausing between tears while speaking with a local TV station. 'My dad didn't do nothing. He's not a criminal.'
There were a few other similar videos with children crying after learning their parents were detained.
Morgan said the media was failing to focus on a different aspects of the raids, suggesting that there were others that fell victim to those who are in the U.S. illegally.
'How about interview the people that – because a majority of time in the cases, these individuals that are here illegally, they also steal identities of U.S. citizens, they get fraudulent documents, social security cards and et cetera. And so it is not just a victimless crime that's going on here,' he said.
The acting CBP chief suggested that those in the media interview people who are affected by illegal immigrants and the fraudulent measures they take to be able to stay in the U.S.
Mike Hurst, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, told reporters the raids were 'believed to be the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation's history.'
Some also criticized the timing of the events, claiming the planned raids should have been postponed in the wake of two mass shootings last weekend.
In El Paso, Texas, 22 people were killed when a gunman opened fire in a Walmart, and in Dayton Ohio just hours later, nine people lost their lives when another shooter began firing on a popular street in the city.
Police say the suspect in El Paso, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, told them when he was taken into custody that his goal was to kill as many Mexicans as possible. He also posted a manifesto online about a half-an-hour before the shooting, which had racist language and included several anti-immigrant sentiments.
Outcry ensued from the Hispanic community, which claimed they were fearful of their lives and felt they could be targeted next.
Many Democrats, including 2020 presidential contenders, claimed Donald Trump's rhetoric facilitated the environment where hateful people felt emboldened to carry out violent acts like this.
They called the president a 'racist' and 'white nationalist.'
Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the agency did not take into account the shootings when carrying out the long planned raids.
'These are enforcement operations that are part of their daily cycle. Something like this has been planned for over a year,' McAleenan told CNN on Sunday. 'This is a criminal investigation with 14 federal warrants issued by a judge, and ICE had to follow through on it. It was already planned and in motion.'
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