Photos from inside a migrant detention facilities in Donna, Texas, have leaked, providing an up-close view President Joe Biden’s emerging crisis on the souther border.
The photos: Axios on Monday published five images from the facility that were obtained by Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Texas, who later released them himself.
- Cuellar said the photos show overcrowded and “terrible conditions for the children” at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s temporary overflow facility and were taken over the weekend by someone else, who was not named in the report.
- CBP facilities have been operating far beyond capacity amid an ongoing surge of border crossings, which has set all-time records for the pace of border crossings at the detention of migrant minors.
James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, a conservative investigative group, later on Wednesday released what appeared to be an additional photo from inside the facility.
The reaction: Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, tweeted that the Axios photos showed why the Biden administration has refused to let journalists tour migrant detention facilities.
- Biden officials, under mounting pressure to allow media access, have cited concerns about COVID-19 and privacy as reasons not to.
- “Every single journalist who was outraged during the Trump administration should be just as outraged now!” Boebert said.
Other conservatives on Twitter called out progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, for failing to muster the kind of Holocaust-level outrage over “kids in cages” that they did during Donald Trump’s presidency.
“Every Biden voter is complicit,” quipped David Harsanyi of National Review, echoing the Trump-era language of the left.
“But don’t worry, Joe Biden is empathetic, so this is all fine,” tweeted Ben Shapiro, a podcaster.
Yet others mockingly recalled Biden’s own campaign-trail condemnation of Trump’s immigration policies.
Biden has continued to blame Trump for the situation at the border even as Republicans have pointed to his administration’s rollback of Trump’s hardline policies.
Trump on Sunday released a statement blasting Biden for turning “a national triumph into a national disaster” when it comes to immigration.
- “We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history,” Trump said.
- “All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot. Instead, in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast.”
