OPINION:
An entirely preventable humanitarian tragedy is occurring at our southern border: Unaccompanied migrant children are being separated from their families and held in cages.
Spurred on President Biden’s lax immigration rules, the number of children crossing our border this year has surged. In January, 5,707 children arrived at the border alone, up from 4,855 the month before.
The Biden administration has stopped the Trump administration practice of sending children back to Mexico or their home countries if they were traveling with an adult who wasn’t their parent. It also has halted construction on the border wall, rescinded a Trump policy that requires non-Mexican migrants to stay in Mexico until their immigration court date in the U.S., and all but ended deportations of illegal aliens.
The result? A surge in migrants.
So much so that yesterday the Biden administration had to open its first temporary child detention center in Carrizo Springs, Texas. The center will hold up to 700 children ages 13 to 17. The emergency facility was used in the summer of 2019 for one month under the Trump administration before it was widely demonized by Democrats for not following the standard of care of more permanent government shelters and closed.
“Meanwhile, around 700 children are being held by Border Patrol, which has reopened a tent facility in South Texas and otherwise holds immigrants in stations unequipped to detain children,” the Associated Press reported. “The Border Patrol’s McAllen Processing Center — where images of detained immigrants were shared worldwide when the Trump administration separated families — is closed for renovations that will remove large cages formed by chain-link fencing.”
So where is the outrage? Where are the tears from the left of these children being held in “cages?”
Back in 2019, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden said: “Under Trump there have been horrifying scenes at the border of kids being kept in cages.”
Then California senator and current Vice President Kamala Harris said at the time, “Babies in cages is a human rights abuse being committed by the United States government.”
And remember New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s photo shoot? Where she visited Texas and detailed how “horrifying” the conditions were at these migrant detention facilities? How officers were keeping women in cells with no water and ordered them to drink from toilets?
Or when Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro posted on social media videos of migrants with sleeping bags, saying: “This moment captures what it’s like for women in CBP custody to share a cramped cell—some held for 50 days—for them to be denied showers for up to 15 days and life-saving medication. For some, it also means being separated from their children.”
So how is what the Biden administration is doing any different than what the Trump administration did two years ago?
“We are in a circumstance where we are not going to expel unaccompanied minors at the border, that would be inhumane, that is not what we are going to do here as an administration,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki replied when asked the question today at her press briefing.
She noted the children weren’t being held in cages — hint: they never were — and that their basic needs were being taken care of. But that was also true under the Trump administration as well.
Ms. Psaki noted that because of COVID guidelines, the children needed to be socially distanced, therefore more facilities needed to be opened.
What she failed to answer was why there is a surge in border crossings this year and what the Biden administration is doing to curb it.
The answer is nothing. The Biden administration’s policies are encouraging it.
Welcome to America. Here’s our humane tent facilities. You’re welcome.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.