Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson agreed on Sunday that the U.S. needs to end its catch-and-release policy at the border, and said the U.S. should continue to expand family detention centers as he did in the Obama administration.
“Without a doubt the images and the reality from 2014, just like 2018, are not pretty and so we expanded family detention,” Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We believed it was necessary at the time. I still believe it is necessary to maintain a certain capability for families. We can’t have catch and release.”
Johnson, who led the Department of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017, said the way he would deal with the current crisis at the U.S. border is to give Border Patrol agents the enforcement tools they need, while also addressing the underlying factors causing people to want to leave Central America.
Johnson’s comments follow remarks he made on Thursday in which he described investment in family detention facilities under Obama’s presidency as “controversial,” and said he received “a lot of heat” for the move.
[Kirstjen Nielsen: Obama separated immigrant families too]
Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that ended the practice of taking children away from parents or guardians accused of entering the U.S. illegally following widespread condemnation.
