Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed in on the current debate over the influx of immigrant children coming to the United States from Central America, in an interview with Jorge Ramos that will air on Fusion tonight.
In a confrontational tone that is now characteristic of Ramos’ interviews with high-profile politicians, the journalist asked Clinton, “Do you think you have a Latino problem?”
“I hope not!” she replied, laughing.
“The Latino community has problems that we all have to work on but I don’t think I have a problem,” she added in a more serious tone.
Ramos’ question was meant to be a starting point since Clinton recently said unaccompanied minors should be sent back.
“Well, that was sort of a short circuit of what I have said overall,” Clinton said.
She added that there are two types of children coming to the U.S. from Central America, migrants and refugees.
“We need on a humanitarian basis to provide emergency care for all children. I don’t care who they are or where they come from. They need to be given the basic necessities and as much love as we can. But if they are migrant children or if they are refugee children we have certain procedures that we are supposed to follow,” Clinton said.
When Ramos asked Clinton who would she deport, she said whoever didn’t have a legitimate claim for asylum or family connections in the United States.
She then talked about the necessity to establish a procedure to deal with these children because if not, “more kids are going to come,” and suggested setting up a screening system in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to determine who gets to come to the United States as a refugee, in order to avoid the dangerous trek through Mexico.