On Friday, Trump was asked about a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office Inspector General that characterized border detention centers as unclean and overcrowded.
Standing outside the White House, the President had a pointed response: Tell people not to go to ’em.
The Tuesday report comes on top of House Democrats — some of whom would like to soon be president — condemning the centers. Alexandria “Concentration Camps” Ocasio-Cortez (here and here), of course, made a dramatic appearance at the fence recently and alleged women were being told to drink from toilets. That was in no uncertain terms refuted by the Customs and Border Protection agency, and Deputy Commissioner Rober Perez said he’d never heard of any such claim in his “26 years of being in this business.” He also called her a liar in an op-ed for Fox News Tuesday:
“I am disgusted by Ocasio-Cortez’s lies and her determination to needlessly and dangerously inflame public sentiment regarding the crisis on our southern border by abandoning facts and making wild and unsupported accusations.”
Furthermore, as covered by RedState’s Sarah Lee, a group of pastors toured centers in El Paso and left with a very different impression than did AOC:
“I read the reports, saw the news clips. I just wanted to see what was actually happening in order to better enable our efforts to find a fair and a just solution to our broken immigration system. To my surprise, I saw something drastically different from the stories I’ve been hearing in our national discourse. Even as a veteran of immigration advocacy in the U.S., I was shocked at the misinformation of the crisis at the border.
“We found no soiled diapers, no deplorable conditions and no lack of basic necessities. They unequivocally denied it — we were witnessing the identical conditions the attorneys saw when they toured the facility days earlier.”
Dan Crenshaw spoke up, too:
“Now she is saying that border patrol agents harassed her and forced migrants to drink out of toilets? This is insanity. This is not true. There is no one else corroborating these kinds of reports.
“Yet, she is using it to try and make her case that we shouldn’t have any enforcement and that we should have open borders. This is really dishonest behavior from a member of Congress and I honestly can’t believe it.”
That’s all fine and good, but now I give you King SpeakUp, His Donaldness, on Friday:
“I think they do a great job with those facilities, but you know how it can be taken care of? Number one: Tell them not to come because it’s illegal.”
-ALEX
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