On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) said that he can agree that not all ICE agents need to be masked, but some do need to have masks.
Gimenez said, “Well, actually, I think that’s — to me, it’s like a red herring, to be honest with you, okay? Like, I said, I was the sheriff of Miami-Dade County. Whenever we conducted a lot of SWAT operations, yeah, some of the folks were wearing masks. I used to be a SWAT medic myself. I understand the aspects of why you did that, especially if you have undercover agents that are working or on that operation, you don’t want to unmask them.”
He continued, “Do they all have to be masked? I can agree that, no, not all of them have to be masked. It all depends on what their particular assignment is. Some need to be masked. Some don’t need to be masked. But I don’t think that that’s the issue why you close a government agency down. You’re not going to — the people in TSA, Coast Guard, etc., all these folks are going to be working without getting paid. It’s really an injustice to them. If you have an issue on policy, let’s discuss it where it needs to be discussed, on the floor of the Senate, the floor of the House, pass bills, and then have the president sign it, and that becomes law. It’s not — this whole thing about shutting the government down doesn’t make any sense to me. It only hurts the innocent, which is really the people that are doing the job. And, at the end, we open it up anyway, okay, and, usually, things don’t change that much. But, I think, again, this is political theater. And the Democrats have to do what they have to do, I guess, to satisfy their base.”
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