'Not paid enough for the hell they go through': Gohmert defends ICE/Border Patrol against Dem attack

A conservative House member gave a scathing rebuttal of a Democrat colleague's remarks about federal immigration enforcement officers at a House hearing on Wednesday.

At the House Judiciary Committee markup of a bill regarding health standards at border detention facilities, Gohmert took issue with remarks made by fellow committee member Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who said that federal immigration agents "can't or won't protect [migrant] children" once they've been taken into custody federal custody.

Gohmert responded by saying that Lofgren's words were "unbecoming."

"I have personally seen many, many, many efforts to protect the children by Border Patrol and by ICE," Gohmert continued, "And it is [an] affront to those people, who are not paid enough for the hell they go through trying to enforce our laws, to say they can't or won't protect these children."

Lofgren later tried to clarify that her statement was made based on evidence from an inspector general's report about detention of preverbal children.

"The statment was that this administration ... can't or won't help these children, preverbal, and they help them every single day," Gohmert rebutted. He then recounted what he had personally witnessed at the border and remarked that "those poor Border Patrolmen were doing the best they could in almost every situation."

"They're trying," Gohmert continued referring to the federal agents, "but it doesn't help when we have people up here [in Congress] encouraging people who are breaking our laws, to resist our law enforcement, it's a wonder that every Border Patrolman doesn't have PTSD."

"They're trying to enforce the law we hired them and paid them to enforce, while we have people in this capital, on Capitol Hill, that are elected servants, and they're telling people to resist the Border Patrol, resist ICE?" Gohmert added. "I mean, it is absolutely insane; they're doing the best they can."

The full markup is available here:

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px}

/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.

We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */