Fox News contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy on Friday defended the detention centers where undocumented immigrant children are being kept, saying that “some African-Americans” told her the conditions are better than those in which they were raised.
“The detention centers are far safer than the journey that these children just came on,” she said. “I spoke to some African-Americans who say, ‘Gosh, the conditions of the detention centers are better than some of the projects that I grew up in.’”
{mosads}Campos-Duffy made the comment on Laura Ingraham’s show, “The Ingraham Angle,” on Thursday night after Ingraham came under fire earlier this week for saying that the detention centers are “essentially summer camps.”
Ingraham later walked back her comments and said she would refer to them as being “like boarding schools,” a comparison she had read elsewhere.
The commentary comes as backlash continues over the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which have resulted in more than 2,000 migrant children being separated from their parents.
Many children are housed in detention facilities, which lawmakers and media who have toured described as “cages.” Footage of the inside of a center released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed dozens of children inside chain-link enclosures and using emergency blankets for bedding.
President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to halt family separations, but the administration has not yet said how they plan to reunite the families that have already been split up.
Campos-Duffy is the wife of Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.). The two both appeared on MTV reality shows “The Real World” and “Road Rules” and have eight children.