Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said videos he recorded at El Paso showed that the border situation is worse than it’s being portrayed, following the expiration of the pandemic-era immigration policy Title 42 at midnight on May 11.
“This is what I’m hearing on the ground from mayors, from Border Patrol agents, from embedded media, everyone is saying it’s not that bad. So on Friday, I visited El Paso and went to the Central Processing Center,” Gonzales said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on May 14.
“In the El Paso sector, there’s over 6,000 people that are in custody in this particular facility. It’s meant to house 1,000 people, it’s housing over 3,000,” Gonzales said. “In one of these rooms … the max capacity is 90 people; there was over 400 in here, that’s a 450 percent capacity.”
He noted that another room, which was intended to hold 120 people, was holding over 700 people.
“We can’t allow ‘not that bad’ to be the normal,” Gonzales said, before adding that an unaccompanied minor had died while in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services last week.