On Friday's MSNBC Live with Craig Melvin, The Atlantic's Steve Clemons hinted that Trump administration officials are glad that children are dying in Border Control custody, and denied that detainees are treated "humanely" as he also suggested that they are not being fed or given water properly.
At 11:05 a.m. Eastern, after host Craig Melvin asked Clemons what kind of conditions Central Americans are fleeing to make them take such risks to travel to the U.S. illegally, he recalled that there is much violence and that those who choose to come to the U.S. are already aware that it will be dangerous.
The MSNBC contributor continued:
This nation has always had the soul and outreach to try to process asylum seekers humanely and robustly, and that is not happening. And so despite what Sarah Huckabee Sanders says, and trying to paint this notion that we're treating these people humanely and feeding them and hydrating them, that's just not true. It's absolutely not true.
He then added: "I don't want to put words in the mouths of people in the White House, but I get the sense that they're not displeased with the sense of toxicity at the border that exists for people who get there, and that includes the deaths of these two children."
Craig followed up, "You get the sense that they're okay with the wretched conditions?" leading Clemons to reply, "I get the sense they are."
A bit later, after host Melvin brought up the issue of using ankle bracelets to get immigrants to show up to court, Clemons suggested that conditions for detainees have gotten worse under the Trump administration, and worried about "concentration camp-type" circumstances forming in Mexico. Here's Clemons:
In the legacy of American experience with this, we've handled all of this well. It's only been recently that we have been botching this and creating horrific conditions. And this is only the first stage. We'll eventually see the equivalent of concentration camp-type conditions in Mexico.
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