Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (yes, him) suggested that Trump did migrant children a favor by separating them from their families at the border.

During his Wednesday appearance on Fox News, Patrick raved about the child detention center in Dilley, Texas to host Harris Faulkner.

PATRICK They don’t let cameras into federal facilities but I’m telling you, Harris, I’ve been to the Dilley facility in Dilley, Texas, almost a year ago this month. And that facility, there are not cages. They stay in rooms, there’s six bunks in a room, there’s television, there’s three great meals a day, they have school, they have soccer field, it’s an absolute, 180 degree lie of what AOC and what anyone from the left says.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t holding cells, you know as people come in, in a small town somewhere. But when those kids get transferred, they’re transferred to an incredible facility.

Faulkner – who almost never challenges any Republican - noted that “either way, the children are separated from their families.” She added, “That criticism is rather bipartisan.”

Patrick replied, “I’m happy to take Fox on a tour if we’re allowed." When Faulkner responded with enthusiasm, he said she'll see “it’s nicer than some of our public schools and facilities where children are.”

Then he suggested that Donald Trump’s policy of separating children from their families protected them from coyotes:

PATRICK: Here’s the thing about the unaccompanied children. And that is that now, what we’re seeing are a lot of the coyotes, they’re the people who smuggle the kids. It’s not necessarily they’re coming across the border with their parents. They’re coming across, often with a male adult who is the smuggler who is turned around and sent back. Now, what do we do with these kids on the border? We can’t just trust – a lot of them have a piece of paper, go to this uncle or this aunt somewhere in the United States. We don’t know who these people are. We have to be very careful to protect these children from child predators. The Trump plan was working well. …

It’s protecting America, Harris, but it’s also looking out for those families and those kids trying to get here. People should come to America legally. When they try to come across illegally, the drug cartels are running all of that on the border. They are in the hands of criminals and they’re not safe. So the Biden administration needs to get back to what Trump was doing in his policies.

Patrick is engaging in some serious sleight of hand and/or conflating here. Trump deliberately separated families and it wasn’t to protect unaccompanied minors from drug cartels. As The Dispatch reported, “In 2018, the Trump administration instituted a 'zero-tolerance policy' that purposefully separated children from parents when they were caught crossing the border illegally, citing a wish to deter families from doing so.”

That same article quotes Elizabeth Neumann, former deputy chief of staff for Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, as saying, “The Trump effort of deterrence, as particularly led by Stephen Miller, was about cruelty … Cruelty was the deterrence. Cruelty was the point.”

It’s almost impossible to believe Patrick doesn’t know the truth.

You can watch him advocate for Trump’s cruel immigration policies by misrepresenting them as humane below, from the February 24, 2021 The Faulkner Focus.