Biden’s “Kids in Cages” Controversy

President Joe Biden has received criticism from both Democrats and Republicans alike for his ‘hypocritical’ stance on immigration facilities for children on the southern border with Mexico. In his presidential election campaign, Biden had criticised Trump for separating children from their parents and promised to close the facilities down. However, a new facility has already opened during Biden’s presidency that will continue with the same approach of separating migrant children as both former president Trump and Obama before him.

Yesterday, over 200 migrants between the ages of 13 to 17 were moved to the first migrant child holding facility opened during Biden’s Presidency. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health and Human Services (HHS) have opened the facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas that has a maximum capacity of 700 children. The children, who had crossed the border unaccompanied, will remain on the 66-acre facility until they can be placed with sponsors, who are often their own family members. 

The holding facilities were a cause of contention in the 2020 presidential election. In August 2019, Biden said “Close them down!” and “We don’t need them,” when discussing the border detention facilities. Biden was also critical of the human cost of such facilities and repeatedly emphasised that children were being separated from their parents when the topic was raised in the presidential debates. In one of these debates, Trump pointed to the fact that many of the facilities had been constructed under the Obama administration: 

“You know, they used to say I built the cages. And then they had a picture in a certain newspaper and it was a picture of these horrible cages and they said, look at these cages, President Trump built them. And then it was determined they were built in 2014. That was him. They built cages.”

White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, has defended the move, stating that it was a necessary measure considering the previous capacity had to be halved due to the coronavirus pandemic. Government officials have also pointed to the fact that the number of border crossings has been increasing, further confounding the issue. January 2021 saw a historically unprecedented number of apprehensions for that month - at 5,700 people. 

The President of the National Border Patrol Council Brandon Judd told Breitbart yesterday that Border Patrol officials currently held 800 unaccompanied children in custody. Despite the legal obligation to release the children to other federal agencies within 72 hours, 212 remained in custody for longer than the legal limit. In response to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s defence of the administration's approach, Judd said the following:

“Today, Jen Psaki said the Administration could not hold the children in other locations due to the Covid protocols including social distancing … but what she didn’t tell the media was that the children in custody were being held in conditions that have nearly no way to social distance.”

Judd continued to criticise both the ‘left-wing’ view and media coverage of the issue:

“The hypocrisy from the left and the mainstream media truly shows they care nothing for the children they used as pawns to attack President Trump … Today Jen Psaki said ‘Customs and Border Control’ [not Customs and Border Protection] continue to transfer unaccompanied children to HHS’ Office of Refugee and Resettlement [ORR],”

“She went to great lengths to explain that due to the pandemic and social distancing, ORR only has capacity for a certain number of children … What she didn’t explain is that the children that ORR doesn’t have that capacity to take are left in facilities far worse than those of HHS … In fact, they are being held in the same locations they accused the Trump Administration of inhuman acts when they said he was holding ‘kids in cages.'”

An advisor to Republican Senator Ted Cruz draws attention to the change in tone of media reporting on the immigration issue between Trump’s and Biden’s Presidencies:

Those in a Democratic Party have also been critical of the Biden Administration: