North Dakota’s GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer volunteered support on Wednesday for chain-link fences in facilities where the government is detaining migrant children, comparing their use to playgrounds and ballparks.
Cramer, who is running to unseat North Dakota’s Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, made his comments in a pair of radio interviews on Wednesday where he said he wanted broad immigration revisions, funding for President Donald Trump’s wall and an end to family separation at the border.
When the topic came up in an interview on KTGO’s “What’s on Your Mind,” Kramer spoke about the merits of bills before the House this week and started talking about fences where children are detained.
“By the way, chain-link fences are around playgrounds all over America, all over North Dakota,” Kramer said.
He continued, “And the chain-link fences allow line of sight visual connectivity with children and families. There’s, you know, there’s nothing inhumane about a chain-link fence. If it is, then every ballpark in America is inhumane.”
Later on Wednesday, a caller on WDAY’s “The Rob (re)Port” asked Cramer about the comment and if he had heard audio of children crying after being separated from their parents.
“I think link fences is irrelevant to the crying of children,” Cramer responded. “My commentary is on the chain-link fence. There’s all this hoopla, because I think there are people on the left who clearly want the country to fail at this. And they would like the chain-link fence, they called it ‘dog cages.’ Well, chain-link fence has been used to, as I said, to protect children from predators on playgrounds, baseball diamonds, all kinds of sports courts and whatnot.”