Michigan’s newly elected Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer canceled plans for an immigration detention center, prompting Republican State Rep. Thomas Albert to speak out on “Fox & Friends.”

“This deal had been under works for well over a year. This former prison facility has sat vacant for over a decade now,” Albert said Tuesday. (RELATED: Private Immigration Detention Center Says It Has Already Fixed Problems Identified In Watchdog Report)

“Immigration Centers of America came in and said hey, we’ll invest tens of millions of dollars to fix it up. We’re going to bring at least 250 really good paying jobs to your community. And you know, Gov. Whitmer came in and just with a heavy hand just killed the deal. It’s actually pretty devastating to my community.”

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Albert said the facility should not be looked at as a prison so much as a “center” to hold illegal immigrants while their cases are being sorted out.

“Essentially it would hold illegal immigrants. You know, it’s not Shawshank Redemption,” he said. “This is, it’s a center that would be holding people who are, from my understanding more of civil infraction. So they’re not criminals. They’re really just being held until they can get their hearing and that’s what this center would do.”

Albert also claimed Whitmer demanded that anyone who claimed they were being separated from their families would be granted release from the facility.

“I wish some people in the media would look into what her stipulations were. So this deal had been in the works. She added some conditions to the development agreement. Some of them were reasonable,” he continued. “But one in particular basically said, if I could boil it down was if anybody claims or alleges that they’re being separated from a family, they’d have to be let go. And, of course nobody could comply with that. So it literally just torpedoed the deal.”

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