GOP Rep Gonzales says video of kids exposes Dem ‘grandstanding’ over conditions at Texas ICE facility
Children being held in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in Texas have access to computers, physical activities and education, according to a video posted by Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, who said Democrats have spun the truth about the agency.
The 34-second clip posted by Gonzales on X shows the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in the San Antonio suburb of Dilley, about 72 miles southwest of the city. It is one of the few facilities that houses families.
"In the coming days, you’ll see a lot of grandstanding by politicians at the Dilley ICE Center in my district, #TX23," Gonzales wrote. "It’s all for show. I've been there and seen the state-of-the-art facilities and protocols that @ICEgov follows.
"Our ICE agents and CBP personnel are doing their jobs, and yet again, Democrats are doing everything they can to spin the truth against law enforcement."
In the video posted by Gonzales, children are using computers in a library, reading at a table and sitting in classrooms, possibly doing schoolwork under what appears to be adult supervision.
Another portion of the video shows a child playing at an indoor basketball hoop, a shaded picnic table area and children appearing to play "red light, green light" on an outdoor basketball court.
The video runs counter to long-held claims by many Democrats who have accused ICE of placing children in cages and holding them in unsanitary and inhumane conditions.
"I want the truth to just be out," Gonzales told Fox News Digital about the video. "This notion that they're in cages, that they're mistreated and all these other things is a flat-out lie.
"It’s easy to talk about a problem and then only talk about the parts that are emotional or the ones that you want to use for your political gain."
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On Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he was denied entry into the Dilley center despite giving officials there 24 hours’ notice.
"This is astonishing. It tells you that these guys have something to hide," Murphy said in a video. "If they are not letting members of Congress in with less than seven days’ notice, it tells you how much work they know they need to do to cover up and hide the things they don’t want us to see."
In another video, he said he met with two families who were held in detention for over a month, leaving their children "scared" by the experience.
Gonzales said he visits ICE detention centers in his district often and has hosted hundreds of his congressional colleagues on tours of the centers. However, Democratic officials never visited when President Joe Biden was in office, he said.
During the Biden administration, facilities in Gonzales’ district were plagued by limited space, he said.
"This is the reason why I say the Democrats are grandstanding now," Gonzales said. "They were nowhere in any of my facilities when Biden was around."