Parties trade blame for migrant centers’ woes
Hearing held as Mexican border crossings surge
WASHINGTON – Democrats who have visited the southern border accused President Donald Trump of cruelty on Friday while Republicans said Democrats were playing politics but doing little to help as the parties clashed at a House hearing over who’s to blame for squalid conditions facing migrants detained entering the U.S.
In an extraordinary duel that underscored the political heat emitted by Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, four lawmakers from each party who have visited the border testified to the House Oversight and Reform Committee about what they’ve seen and came to starkly different conclusions.
The hearing came as the number of families, children and other migrants entering the U.S. from Mexico has surged above 100,000 monthly since March, overwhelming federal agencies’ ability to detain them in sanitary conditions and highlighting the issue in 2020 presidential and congressional races.
“It is a policy of dehumanizing,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, D-N.Y., one of four high-profile Democratic freshmen who testified.
They were among a larger group of Democrats who visited Texas facilities last week and reported overloaded, fetid facilities. They said detained women spoke of being told to drink from toilets and eat unhealthy food.
Sitting at the same witness table as their Democratic counterparts, four border state Republicans blamed the Democratic Party for the problem.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-texas, accused Democrats of using their border trip to put on “a show in front of fences and the media” and of “vilifying” border agents for a problem they’ve not caused. He said that by not toughening immigration laws, Democrats have “created the very magnet” that attracts migrants to the U.S. And then, he said, the Democratic-controlled House “cowardly sits in the corner, doing nothing” to address the problems that result.
Congress last month approved a $4.6 billion measure with money to improve border stations and migrants’ treatment. That passed only after liberal and Hispanic Democrats voted “no,” complaining that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., hadn’t fought hard enough to add requirements for how detained migrants must be treated.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-ariz., said comparing the detention camps to Nazi concentration camps – a swipe at Ocasio-cortez, who has used the analogy – doesn’t solve the problem.
The crossfire was fueled after the panel’s Democrats released a report on 2,648 of the children the Trump administration separated from their families last year before abandoning that policy under pressure.
The report, based on data the panel demanded from federal agencies, found that 18 children under age 2 were kept from their parents up to half a year. Hundreds were held longer than previously revealed, including 25 kept more than a year.