White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday the disturbing images of a crowded migrant 'overflow' tent in Texas showed what the Biden administration has said all along – the border facilities are no place for children.
The scope and depth of what's happening right now on our southern border is go immense that it nearly defies description. Thousand of illegal immigrants and children, packed into squalid cages and holding areas, looking for all the world like a concentration camp is sending shockwaves across Washington today.
Compared to the Biden administration, Donald Trump is a indeed a 'stable genius' with how he and his team handled the border. Under Trump, crossings by illegals plummeted, under Biden they are coming over in numbers so large that a state of emergency may soon be declared to deal with it all. How bad is it? Bad enough where the Biden people have banned the media from visiting or viewing the facilities. That's how bad it is.
Pictures Monday show inside the U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary overflow facility in Donna, Texas
FROM DAILY MAIL UK: ‘These photos show what we've long been saying, which is that these border patrol facilities are not places made for children,’ she said in her press briefing on Monday. Refusing to call the situation at the US southern border a crisis, Psaki added: ‘They are not places that we want children to be staying for an extended period of time. Our alternative is to send children back on this treacherous journey that is not, in our view, the right choice to make.'
She added: 'Children, presenting at our border, who are fleeing violence, who are fleeing prosecution, who are fleeing terrible situations is not a crisis. We feel that it is our responsibility to humanely approach this circumstance, and make sure they are treated and put in conditions that are safe.'
Congressman Henry Cuellar had released images from inside the U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary overflow facility in Donna over the weekend. He said 400 unaccompanied male minors are being held in 'terrible conditions' in a space meant to hold a maximum of 260 people. Democrat Cuellar said he did not take the images but said that they offer an insight into the 'terrible conditions for the children' at the border, where he has recently toured a different shelter for children.
Psaki also said Monday that she didn’t know when media would be given access to the border facilities despite repeated requests by reporters to be allowed to visit.
The Biden administration has so far banned media access to the facilities amid a growing humanitarian and political crisis at the US southern border. Lawyers and lawmakers have been given tours.
‘We are working to finalize details and I hope to have an update in the coming days,’ Psaki said after admitting 'putting in place more effective and efficient processing at the border...is going to take some time'.
Confirming that the children at the facilities had been tested for COVID Psaki said those who needed to be quarantined were separated out from the rest of the population. She didn’t have a timeline on when President Biden might go the border after the president said on Sunday he would make a trip at some point.
A total of 823 unaccompanied children were held at US-Mexico border facilities for more than 10 days - more than a fourfold increase over the last week, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document leaked to Axios Sunday.
Children are not supposed to be held in border patrol custody for more than three days. As of Saturday 2,226 children had been held in custody for more than five days and 823 for more than 10 days. The number of unaccompanied migrant kids in US custody surpassed 15,000 as of Saturday as the Biden administration announced that they 'would not expel young, vulnerable children.' This is a reverse of Trump administration policy, which was to generally expel all people who tried to illegally cross the border, regardless of age.
Neha Desai, a lawyer for the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL), told CBS about the harrowing conditions that she and her NCYL colleague Leecia Welch witnessed when they visited a tent holding facility for unaccompanied minors in Donna, Texas, last week.
She said the tent was so overcrowded that migrant children had to take turns sleeping on the floor and could only shower one time a week. The children also reported being unable to call family members, Desai said. READ MORE
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