Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took a hardline stance on illegal immigration on Sunday saying he doesn’t care if migrants are detained for more than a year as long as it keeps the lawbreakers off of the streets.

“I don’t care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days, we’re not going to let those men go that I saw,” Graham told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Sunday. The senator was discussing his recent tour of a migrant detention facility with Vice President Mike Pence on Friday.

Graham continued, “I saw 900 illegal immigrants that were captured for coming into our country illegally, housed in detention facilities that was meant for 385. So they had to put a tent in the back. What I saw is a bunch of people who have been here before, broke the law before, and we’re not going to let them go.”

The South Carolina senator also pushed back against claims that migrant detention centers are “concentration camps.”

“We’re not going to let them go,” he said. “This is not a concentration camp that I saw. It is a facility overwhelmed. I’m willing to buy beds for these people so they will have a better place to get a night sleep, but I’m not going to let them go.”

Graham also praised immigration enforcement agents and said they are doing an “incredible job” under “difficult circumstances.”

The Republican senator said he doesn’t care if illegal immigrants have to be kept in “tents,” as long as the ones who may be criminals are kept away from American citizens.

Source: Fox News

“I don’t care if we have to build tents from Texas to Oklahoma, we’re not going to let these people go,” he said.

Pence also defended immigration agents and migrant detention center conditions following his Friday tour. He said any issues are due to the system being overworked, which Graham also reiterated in his Sunday interview.

“I couldn’t be more impressed with the compassionate work that our Customs and Border Protection are doing here at this border facility,” he said.

Pence also took to Twitter to slam CNN for their coverage of his tour, blasting them for selectively editing footage of Pence in the detention center. One clip that went viral was of Pence being shown an area at the facility that held a large group of migrants behind a chainlink fence. Though it was not a great sight, the section of the facility was only a temporary holding area and the amount of people being kept in the area only shows how out of control the issue of border security is in this country right now.

“CNN is so dishonest. Today we took reporters to a detention facility on the border for families and children and all told us they were being treated well,” the vice president tweeted.

He continued, “The crisis at our southern border is not a “manufactured crisis”, it is real and is overwhelming our system. To show this, we also visited an overcrowded facility for adult men, many of whom have been arrested multiple times.”

He added, “Rather than broadcast the full story, showing the compassionate care the American people are providing to vulnerable families, tonight CNN only played video of men in the temporary facility and didn’t play any footage of the family facility at all.”

CNN is so dishonest. Today we took reporters to a detention facility on the border for families and children and all told us they were being treated well. — Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019

The crisis at our southern border is not a “manufactured crisis”, it is real and is overwhelming our system. To show this, we also visited an overcrowded facility for adult men, many of whom have been arrested multiple times. — Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019

These men were in a temporary holding area because Democrats in Congress have refused to fund additional bed space. — Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019

Rather than broadcast the full story, showing the compassionate care the American people are providing to vulnerable families, tonight CNN only played video of men in the temporary facility and didn’t play any footage of the family facility at all… — Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019