CLAIM: Former Vice President Joe Biden and actress Eva Longoria told a Florida audience on Tuesday that President Trump locked immigrant kids in cages at the southern border.
VERDICT: Misleading. The policy was devised by the Obama-Biden administration.
Biden and Longoria attacked Trump on Tuesday over the Obama-Biden policy of putting kids in cages at the southern border.
“Donald Trump has failed the Hispanic community time and time again,” Biden said.
“It’s not a secret. Whether it’s in his heinous act of separating children from their families at our border…” he said.
Meanwhile, while introducing Biden, Longoria said Trump has spent four years “demonizing Latinos.”
“At the border, he has ripped kids from the arms of their parents and has locked them in cages,” she said with the emotional, effective delivery of a highly trained Hollywood actress.
Breitbart News previously reported that the policy of separating kids from adults at the border — for one, to ensure they are not being trafficked — was created by the Obama-Biden administration.
The strategy was devised in 2014:
Originally, the Obama administration was “warehousing” children — literally — in overwhelmed Border Patrol facilities. Breitbart News broke the story of the surge, which was partly triggered by Obama’s policy of allowing illegal alien children who entered the country as minors to stay in the country (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA).
…
The “cages” are chain-link enclosures in Border Patrol processing facilities that are meant to protect children from adults in custody. They are not permanent accommodations.
In addition to pinning blame on Trump, Biden at one point attempted to deny ever even creating the rules.
Last September, Univision host Jorge Ramos asked Biden why Latino voters should trust him after their administration continued deportations.
Biden defended the Obama administration’s policies as more humane than those of Trump’s.
“We didn’t lock people up in cages,” he said.
Democrats and left-wing media have circulated images of kids in “cages” and implied they were from the Trump era when, in fact, they were from 2014.
The Associated Press published this photo in June 2014 depicting two children in a chain-link enclosure:
In this June 18, 2014 file photo, two female detainees sleep in a holding cell, as the children are separated by age group and gender, as hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center in Nogales, Arizona. (Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo)
The Obama Department of Homeland Security distributed a photo that showed Secretary Jeh Johnson touring a facility:
Border Patrol officers escort Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Gov. Jan Brewer through the department’s Nogales processing facility for immigrant children. (Photo courtesy Barry Bahler/Department of Homeland Security)
As recently as Tuesday, progressives such as MSNBC host Rachel Maddow lamented Trump’s treatment of kids at the border. She used photos from the Obama-Biden era to make her point.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays. Listen to segments on YouTube or download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Twitter, like him on Facebook, and follow him on Parler.
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