Hey Rep. Gonzales, Finish The Thought: What About That Five-Year-Old US Citizen?

from the the-five-year-olds-see-you-as-the-bad-guy dept

Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales from Texas went on Face the Nation on Sunday and said a lot of silly things, doing his best as a loyal Trump foot soldier to defend the indefensible, to make sense of the nonsensical, and to lie about all the rest.

However, I wanted to focus on one bit of the clip that I’ve watched over a dozen times, and still can’t figure out what Rep. Gonzales meant. And I’m writing this in hopes that some DC or Texas reporter asks Gonzales to explain. Here’s the clip:

And here’s the transcript from CBS. I’m including a bit more than is in the clip just to get the full context of what he’s saying:

MARGARET BRENNAN: You have this facility, though, in your district, Dilley, and that is for family detentions. That’s where little five-year-old Liam Ramos from Minnesota was held before a judge, that’s the picture of him there, ordered him released. He was ordered released because his family has a pending asylum claim, a legal process. He had entered with U.S. government permission through a process that the Biden administration had deemed legal. The current administration does not. The CBPOne app. Liam’s father gave an interview to Telemundo and you read the transcript, he’s talking about this five-year-old. He’s not okay. He’s waking up at night crying. He’s worried he’s going to be taken again. It’s psychological trauma, according to the father. And the administration is still trying to deport him. Do you understand why they are so focused on this five-year-old and his dad if they did come in through the front door with U.S. government permission? 

REP. GONZALES: Well, the front door was via an app that Biden knew exactly what he was doing, and he created this huge mess, and now President Trump is there to clean up.

MARGARET BRENNAN: –but he came in the front door, he wasn’t–

REP. GONZALES: –through an app–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –across the border–

REP. GONZALES: –through an app that wasn’t vetted. And bottom line is, he’s likely- they’re not going to qualify for asylum. So what do you do with all the people that go through the process and do not qualify for asylum? You deport them. I understand the five-year-old and it, you know, it breaks my heart. I have a five year old at home. I also think, what about that five-year-old U.S. citizen–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –You feel comfortable defending that? 

REP. GONZALES: I feel comfortable- we have to have a nation of laws. If we don’t have a nation of laws–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –They were following the- the law that is- that is that’s the rub, is that a new administration deemed the last administration’s regulation not to be legal.

Again, there’s a lot of nonsense in there, including Gonzales trying to pretend that Liam Ramos and his father had not entered the right way and following the laws of the US for those seeking to come here just because it was “through an app.” That app was the legal process. They followed the law. They did it the right way. To magically make that out to be violating the law because the next administration no longer wants to support that path doesn’t change the underlying fact that they were doing things the legal way.

But, again, let’s leave that aside. I simply want to focus in on the question of what the fuck Gonzales meant when he said:

I understand the five-year-old and it, you know, it breaks my heart. I have a five year old at home. I also think, what about that five-year-old U.S. citizen–

What about them? Under what scenario, process, or idea is that hypothetical five-year-old US citizen harmed? I’ve been unable to think or a single possible scenario in which the US citizen five-year-old could be harmed by allowing Liam Ramos to go through the asylum process.

Perhaps Rep. Gonzales can enlighten us by completing his thought and explaining.

Seriously: what is the scenario here? Is pre-kindergarten a zero-sum game now? Does Liam Ramos’s presence in a classroom somehow harm the US citizen in the next seat?

Brennan cut him off before he could finish the thought, and nobody followed up. So we don’t know. But I’d really like someone in the DC or Texas press corps to ask him to complete that sentence. Because I can think of one very obvious way that five-year-old US citizens are being harmed right now—and it’s not by Liam Ramos.

It’s by watching their government kidnap their classmates.

Nicholas Grossman talked about how his own child is distraught because some of his classmates can no longer come to school for fear their parents may be kidnapped by ICE:

Indeed, the NY Times went and actually spoke with Liam Ramos’ classmates, and they seem legitimately distraught that government agents kidnapped their friend and sent him halfway across the country to a dangerous concentration camp. The video on that page is absolutely heartbreaking. I don’t see how anyone with a soul could possibly support or justify what is being done to Ramos. And to claim it’s in the name of his US citizen classmates is even more obnoxious. Just a couple of the quotes from five year olds:

“You are scaring schools, people, and the world. You should be kind, helpful, and caring like normal police. Not dangerous, scary, and stealing people. I think you should make friends with the world.”

“You, right now, you’re making people really sad because you’re just taking them away without them doing anything.”

So, please, Rep. Gonazales, tell us what you were thinking. What about those five-year-olds? What about kidnapping their classmate makes them better off? What about any of this makes sense? They’re not criminals. They followed the official legal process. They came in through “the front door” following the official process of the government at the time.

At no point have they done anything wrong.

So please, Rep. Gonzales: finish the thought. What about that five-year-old US citizen?

Because those five-year-old US citizens have already given their answer. They’re not being harmed by Liam Ramos. They’re being harmed by a government that just taught them their friends can disappear without warning.

That’s “what about” them.

Filed Under: asylum, immigration, liam ramos, margaret brennan, minnesota, tony gonzales