Leaked photos show kids locked up in 'pods' at Texas border camp, Trump says 'country is being destroyed'
Alarming photographs have emerged from inside one of Joe Biden administration's border detention facilities in Texas, showing hundreds of migrants – including several children – locked up in "pods" that did little to enforce social distancing guidelines amid the pandemic.
Representative Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) provided the photos to Axios in a bid to raise awareness about the situation. He told the outlet how each of the eight "pods" in the facility had a 260-person occupancy, but one pod held more than 400 unaccompanied male minors as of Sunday.
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The photos were leaked from the Rio Grande Valley Sector (RGV) facility, which has reportedly started releasing undocumented immigrants in to the US without a scheduled court date, according to Axios and Fox News. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported how the facilities housing migrant children are “akin to jails” and that they are facing “horrific conditions” that include “disease, hunger, and overcrowding.”
Speaking to Fox News, border patrol officials said they had been directed to use “prosecutorial discretion (PD) to forgo the hours-long process of paperwork required to issue [a Notice to Appear] amid the surge of migrants at the border.” Instead, illegal border crossers are reportedly entered into the system using biometric data and then released into the mainland.
This was separate from the unaccompanied minors fiasco unleashed under Biden. There are more than 15,000 unaccompanied children in the possession of the U.S. federal government as of today, nearly double the highest number ever recorded by the Department of Homeland Security, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.
BREAKING: These photos were taken at the inside of Biden’s immigrant detention facilities in Texas.
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 22, 2021
All these photos were shared with Axios by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) pic.twitter.com/p0lOweagtN
Former President Donald J. Trump ripped the Biden administration to shreds over the border crisis on Sunday, saying that his administration had passed on “the most secure border in history” and that “all they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot.”
“Instead, in the span of just a 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,” Trump explained. “The pathetic, clueless performance of Secretary Mayorkas on the Sunday Shows today was a national disgrace. His self-satisfied presentation — in the middle of the massive crisis he helped engineer — is yet more proof he is incapable of leading DHS. Even someone of Mayorkas’ limited abilities should understand that if you provide Catch-and-Release to the world’s illegal aliens[,] then the whole world will come.”
“Furthermore, the Mayorkas Gag Order on our Nation’s heroic border agents and ICE officers should be the subject of an immediate congressional investigation,” the 45th POTUS asserted, “But it’s clear they are engaged in a huge cover-up to hide just how bad things truly are. The only way to end the Biden Border Crisis is for them to admit their total failure and adopt the profoundly effective, proven Trump policies.”
“They must immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks—they should never have stopped it,” Trump concluded. “They are causing death and human tragedy. In addition to the obvious, drugs are pouring into our country at record levels from the Southern Border, not to mention human and sex trafficking. This Administration’s reckless policies are enabling and encouraging crimes against humanity. Our Country is being destroyed!”