Obama DHS Sec Jeh Johnson: ‘We Believed It Was Necessary’ to Detain Children, Families

On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said that during the Obama administration, they did detain some children alone and families.

He argued that at the time it was justified.

Partial transcript as follows:

WALLACE: Let’s look — because you mentioned it — at how the Obama administration and you as secretary of Homeland Security handle this back in 2014 when there was also a spike in children, most of them unaccompanied coming across the border. You started jailing entire families. In some cases, not a lot, but in some, you separated children from their parents in these pictures that we are putting up, from 2014, show pictures of unaccompanied minors in effect jail situations. As you look back on that, did you handle it so well?

JOHNSON: Well, Chris, without a doubt the images and the reality from 2014 just like 2018 are not pretty. And so, we expanded family detention. We had then 34,000 beds for family detention, only 95 of 34,000 equipped to deal with families. So, we extended it. I freely admit it was controversial. We believed it was necessary at the time. I still believe it is necessary to name (ph) a certain capability for families. We can’t have catch and release and in my three years we deported, or repatriated or returned over a million people.

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