Any American old enough to comprehend the English language during the last presidential term will certainly remember the outcry over “kids in cages” at the border with Mexico.
Well, in case you don’t remember, basically, the families who were attempting to cross the border illegally and caught, were then split up because the minors weren’t being put in jail, only the adults. Not only did the media jump on this particular bandwagon, but representatives went to the border doing photo-ops with children, the bulk of whom were in centers built by former President Barack Obama.
Democrats promised that they would never partake in such a barbaric ritual as to detain lawbreakers or keep children from going to jail by only taking their parents.
Except that … you guessed it, President Joe Biden is doubling down on the “kids in cages” motif, expanding the juvenile detention center, this time calling it “reopening overflow facilities”.
Vice President Kamala Harris, then a senator from California, said in 2018 when the family separation controversy was at its height that Trump’s treatment of migrants was a “crime against humanity.”
However, none of those sentiments kept the Department of Health and Human Services from reopening a facility in Texas to house up to 700 migrants ages 13 to 17 on Monday. Accordion to the Post, the second facility in Florida is also is being reopened.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was (rightfully) pressed about the children being detained, you know, like the Trump administration did, during her Tuesday briefing. As one might imagine, she danced around the issue, calling it a temporary measure for the safety of unaccompanied minors made necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There needs to be spacing,” Psaki said. “To ensure the health and safety of these kids, HHS took steps to open an emergency facility to add capacity where these kids can be provided the care they need before they are safely placed with families and sponsors.
“So it’s a temporary reopening during COVID-19, our intention is very much to close it, but we want to make sure we can follow COVID protocols.”
She added, “Our goal is for them to then be transferred to families or sponsors. So, this is our effort to ensure that kids are not in close proximity and that we are abiding by the health and safety standards that the government has been set out.”
The press secretary was quick to assure journalists that housing the kids at the 66-acre site was akin to holding “kids in cages.” So possibly if the acreage is big enough it’s no longer a problem to detain minors?
At this point in the liberal progression, it seems that the most high-ranking Democrats aren’t even trying to keep themselves from seeming like they’re holding a double standard. It’s understandable that people from a party would see the same action done by the opposing party and just not trust the judgment of the people in charge. However, in the case of the children being detained at the border, there was an action-based concern about the needs of children.
Whether or not the Democrats are correct that the families shouldn’t be separated, whether or not there should be open immigration, or there should be record requests for asylum; before us today we have an apples to apples comparison of what standard the Democrats hold themselves to versus what they held Trump to.
