‘We’ve Been Warning’: GOP Congressman Says Trump Needed ICE ‘Course Correction a Long Time Ago’

Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-TX) expressed confidence Monday that the House of Representatives would pass the Republican spending bill to end the partial government shutdown, despite Democrats’ lack of support for Department of Homeland Security funding.

Democrats had been holding out on the $1.2 trillion funding package over $10 billion provisions for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by demanding certain reforms to ICE’s aggressive deportation tactics. A last-minute deal with the White House included a two-week stopgap measure to allow lawmakers to continue negotiating DHS funding.

Gimenez told Maria Bartiromo that Republicans have been “warning the Trump administration for a while” about the deportation issues during an appearance on Fox Business.

“I think there will be some kind of negotiations with the president on what immigration enforcement is going to look like in the future,” Gimenez said. “Unfortunately, we’ve been warning the administration about the enforcement that has been going on. We thought that there should have been course correction a long time ago — now I guess going to be forced on us by the Democrats. Unfortunately, we could have done it ourselves — should done it ourselves — but that didn’t happen.”

Bartiromo asked what Gimenez meant by “course correction.”

“We should have been focusing on criminals and gang members and people with active deportation orders,” Gimenez said. “I don’t think we should have been focusing on people that have been here for a long time — grandmothers, etc. — who happened to be in a neighborhood during an enforcement action. I think a mistake coming back to haunt us right now.”

Gimenez added that the administration should have focused on criminals “from the get-go.”

“And, unfortunately, we want beyond that, okay? And we shouldn’t. Because, not only is it, I think is wrong, but it’s also going to harm our economy. Many of these people are doing jobs in our economy, right now, and so, we need to find a path forward. “I don’t think that what we were doing was the right way. We should have just focused on that group that the president said he was going to boot out of the country, which he was right to do,” he argued.

Watch above via Fox Business.

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