Ana Navarro: US Needs an Immigration Policy That ‘Does Not Involve Tear Gassing Children’

Chaos at the US-Mexico border over the weekend bled into the realm of Monday morning cable news debates.  While Fox & Friends is providing nearly wall-to-wall coverage of the disruption between US border agents and Central American migrants attempting to illegally cross the border, CNN’s New Day is taking a more dispassionate approach to it’s reporting.

Border agents are receiving criticism for shooting tear gas and/or pepper spray into Mexican territory as a means to disperse migrants alleged to have thrown rocks and bottles at agents. Chief Border Agent Rodney Scott revealed to New Day’s Alisyn Camerota that 42 illegal immigrants were arrested and detained by border agents, and defended their response by saying “If they were truly asylum seekers, they would have walked up and surrendered and that did not take place.”

The discussion that followed put a fine point in the complicated nature of this political debate. Jeffrey Toobin opened with the clear-eyed assessment that “there shouldn’t be a dilapidated part of the fence and people shouldn’t throw rocks” before adding that “a wall in and of itself strikes me as much more symbol than substance.”

This was followed by Ana Navarro’s claim that tear-gassing mothers and children as being uniquely un-American. Navarro said “Look, there are no easy answers here. And it’s a very difficult situation, a very complicated situation. I don’t find that a compelling answer. We’ve seen the images of the children and the women and there has got to be a pragmatic and compassionate answer that does not involve tear gassing children. That is not who America is. That is not what we do.”

Watch the clip above, courtesy of CNN.