Fox News host Laura Ingraham defended the Trump administration and attacked former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele on her show Friday, blasting what she called the “demagoguery” around the controversial issue of family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We can’t house kids the same way we house adult criminals, obviously, and sadly, you violate our laws, you’re running afoul of the U.S. criminal system, and criminals are separated from their children all the time,” Ingraham said during a segment on her show, “The Ingraham Angle.”

Ingraham took aim at comments Steele made on MSNBC earlier in the day, during which the former RNC chairman likened Trump’s use of detainment facilities to Nazi concentration camps. Children of migrant parents who illegally cross the border are held in facilities while their parents face prosecution until they can be placed with a family member or in foster care.

{mosads}

“Their kids could be next,” Steele warned parents during the segment.

Ingraham fired back on her show, accusing Steele of “minimizing” and “dismissing” the Holocaust, which involved the deaths of around 6 million Jews and millions of others in Nazi Germany and its occupied areas.

“You just saw the former head of the GOP, who I know I’m really disappointed in you Michael Steele,” she began, “accusing the president of running concentration camps?”

“To describe what we are doing at our border, where people cross the border illegally or present themselves and say, ‘I want asylum,’ as ‘concentration camps’ is both, I think, dismissive in minimizing the Holocaust and it’s just wrong,” the Fox News host continued, adding that the children were being treated “as well as we can treat them under the circumstances.”

Ingraham’s comments come amid reports of breastfeeding mothers having their children taken away and reports that vast facilities are housing roughly 1,400 children.

“As long as we have one veteran on a street tonight, we shouldn’t be spending money on illegal immigrants in the United States. I’m sorry. We’ve got to catch them and take them back to their home country,” Ingraham concluded.

Trump has blamed Democrats for the policy that mandates separating parents facing prosecution from their children. The Trump administration began implementing the policy as part of its “zero tolerance” approach to prosecuting immigrants illegally crossing the border. 

“You’re doing a good job. And it’s not an easy job. I know what you’re going through right now with families is very tough. But those are the bad laws the Democrats gave us,” Trump said to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen last month during a meeting with California officials.

“They gave us that law and they don’t want to do anything about it,” he added. “They’ll leave it like that because they don’t want to make any changes. And now you’re breaking up families because of the Democrats. It’s terrible.”

Senate Democrats have introduced legislation banning separating families at the border.