Texas congressman on partial government shutdown, Greg Bovino and Liam Ramos
EDITOR'S NOTE: Five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father are back home in Minnesota Sunday after being released from immigration custody. Read more about it HERE.
WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA) - Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about the partial government shutdown.
According to Brennan, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he expects the shutdown to end Tuesday, but she said some of Rep. McCaul's Republican colleagues have conditions for getting on board, as well as having a one-seat majority at this point.
This prompted Brennan to ask if Speaker Johnson is overconfident, and if he has McCaul's vote, to which the congressman said:
"He has my vote. I mean, we voted for this last time. The Democrats, most of them voted for this. For the Democrats to turn around and vote against it on Tuesday, just to shut down the federal government, makes no sense to me at all. I think the speaker...the trick is getting it through the Rules Committee, and I believe that the speaker would not do that if he didn't have the votes."
During the interview, Brennan and McCaul talked about the Trump Administration sending Tom Homan to Minneapolis as well as relieving Greg Bovino from his role as Border Patrol's commander.
The Justice Department also said its opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti.
When asked if his concerns about what happened in Minneapolis satisfied, McCaul said:
"I've called for a full investigation. DOJ has opened that investigation. Civil Rights Division would have jurisdiction over this. Look, I mean, Bovino went in there with these roving patrols. He escalated the situation. He escalated the tension between the public and law enforcement. He put his agents in a position they should never have been put in. They have no training for crowd control. Their job is to go in and remove criminal aliens, violent felons from the United States, and get them out of here. And so, you know, Tom Homan is a consummate professional. He's been doing this for a long time. I've known him for a long time. He's going to go back to the core mission of ICE, and that's targeted law enforcement operations, not roving the streets causing chaos."
Later in the interview, Brennan and McCaul talked about a federal judge ordering the Trump Administration to release five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father.
This led Brennan to ask McCaul if this raises concerns that there are children who get caught in the crosshairs of federal agents detaining migrants, and if there should be some guardrails to be put on Homeland Security and what they're doing, or if he trusts the DHS to do it, and the congressman said:
"I think that is part of the reform process we'll be looking at...we can pass the laws. I think the problem is situations like these give a black eye to...actually law enforcement officers are just trying to do their jobs. And, look, the mission, I think, is to get violent felons out of the country. Most people support that. It's a president- the number one issue the president won the election on. What I worry about is turning a winning issue into a liability. I still believe the American people want us to remove dangerous, violent criminals from the streets, but they don't want to see these images of children and people being dragged out of their cars and U.S. citizens. Those excessive use of forces cases need to stop. And I think Tom Homan will de-escalate the situation, as I've been calling for for weeks."
To watch more of Brennan's interview with McCaul, click here.
