Overcrowded, squalid conditions are more widespread at migrant centers along the southern border than initially revealed, the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog said Tuesday. Its report describes standing-room-only cells, children without showers and hot meals, and detainees clamoring desperately for release....The overcrowding is obvious in several of the report's photos:
In June, inspectors from the department visited five facilities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and found children had few spare clothes and no laundry facilities. Many migrants were given only wet wipes to clean themselves and bologna sandwiches to eat, causing constipation and other health problems, according to the report. Children at two of the five facilities in the area were not given hot meals until inspectors arrived.
Overcrowding was so severe that when the agency’s internal inspectors visited some of the facilities, migrants banged on cells and pressed notes to windows begging for help.
“At one facility, some single adults were held in standing-room-only conditions for a week, and at another, some single adults were held more than a month in overcrowded cells,” according to the report, which built off an initial inquiry by the inspector general in May that described similar conditions in facilities in El Paso.
But in the right-wing media, the existence of this govertnment report doesn't lend credence to accounts from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers of horrific conditions at a facility in Clint, Texas, near El Paso. It's like the Mueller report all over again: The actual contents of the OIG report are irrelevant, and anyone who claims to have seen evidence of crimes is a liar -- especially, in this case, Ocasio-Cortez.
So, at Fox, we have this:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., hasn't told the truth about her visit to a border detention facility and refuses help alleviate the crisis, according to Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas.And from Rush Limbaugh:
Crenshaw then went a step further, claiming Ocasio-Cortez is one of several Democrats who want to see open borders, during a Tuesday appearance on "The Story."
"It's sad to see, she's getting bolder with her lies on this," he claimed.
"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...."
"I think she’s trying to create a situation to make herself look good, make the federal employees look bad, and somebody needs to call her on it," Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday....And this guy:
Limbaugh continued, saying that hearings should be called so the congresswoman's claims can be put under scrutiny.
"The DOJ needs to call her on it. ICE, Border Patrol, they need to call her on it," he said. "There need to be hearings held on these kinds of baseless charges. They need to be refuted, blown to smithereens."
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez was "full of indignation" when he saw the reports and heard from politicians about the deplorable and inhumane conditions for illegal immigrants at an El Paso County, Texas migrant detention center. But what he saw at the same facility toured by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. with a group of pastors was "drastically different."(Rodriguez has been a Trump adviser who spoke at his inaugural. In early 2018 it was reported that Rodriguez had broken with Trump because of the president's lack of support for DACA recipients, but he seems to have the president's back now.)
The president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the world's largest Hispanic Christian organization, and senior pastor of New Seasons Christian Worship Center in Sacramento shared his firsthand experience touring a migrant detention center during a press briefing Monday.
“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," Rodriguez, who has advised President Trump and both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush on immigration reform, noted. “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."
Kellyanne Conway called Ocasio-Cortez a liar. The New York Post denounced what it called her "border-camp theater."
On the right, there's only one story here: AOC's dishonesty. (It's also not a story that Ocasio-Cortez was depicted engaging in forced fellatio on President Trump in a Photoshopped image that appeared on a message board frequented by Border Patrol agents, as ProPublica reported on Monday. The image is at the link.)
There's no wrongdoing. There are only liberal enemies. It's the right's response to the Mueller report all over again.
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