CV NEWS FEED // Many are expressing disgust and anger at the Biden administration after a pool of journalists were finally allowed to tour and report on a migrant facility in Texas Tuesday.
“Reporters toured the temporary border facility in Donna, TX today,” reported CBS’s Nicole Sganga on Twitter. “The Biden admin allowed pooled coverage for the first time. We saw a ‘pod’ designed for 32 migrant children under CDC guidelines now holding 615. The facility is at 1700% pandemic capacity.”
In a series of tweets, Sganga went on to reveal that the conditions in which migrants — including children — are being held are far more inhumane than the Biden administration would have the public believe.
Officials are keeping unaccompanied children as young as four months old in a “recreational area” day and night, Sganga reported, “because there’s no just room for them in the dormitory areas.”
“The outdoor recreational area is being used to stage COVID testing before unaccompanied migrant children are transferred to HHS facilities,” Sganga continued. “We counted more than 50 COVID positive (and largely asymptomatic) kids waiting for their quarantined bus right next to a soccer game.”
Over 2,000 migrants “have been here for over the legal limit of 72 hours,” Sganga wrote, referring only to the one temporary processing facility she visited. Officials said that “more than 1200 migrants are processed and waiting to be transferred to HHS facilities,” she added, but “HHS has nowhere to put them.”
“At least 39 unaccompanied migrant children have been in the temporary processing facility for more than 15 DAYS, Acting Executive Officer for RGV Operational Programs Division, Oscar Escamilla, told reporters,” Sganga reported. “The legal limit is 72 hours.”
A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol official told reporters that the agency expects over one million “encounters” of migrants at the Southern border this year.
Sganga also reported that the facility is operating more than 250% over budget. “It should cost $6 million per month for @CBP to run the facility at its 250-person capacity. It’s so overcrowded that it costs $16 million per month.”
In the brief time of their trip, Sganga added, pool reporters “stumbled upon 27 unaccompanied migrant children and young families outside of Mission, TX,” and also caught sight of “dozens of migrants” assembled beneath the Anzalduas International Bridge in the same town.
Biden Administration Under Scrutiny
The reports from the temporary facility in Donna, TX elicited strong condemnations from many. The inevitable public backlash will likely focus itself not only on the ground-level management and conditions of migrant facilities, but also on the White House and the Democrat Party.
“THIS is a humanitarian disaster, Dems, and you know it!” tweeted Buzz Patterson, a Republican. “Speak up and speak out!”
Carly Ortiz-Lytle of The Washington Examiner simply reshared an embarrassingly relevant piece of footage from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “There’s a pandemic going on,” Psaki replied to a reporter in February. “I’m sure you’re not suggesting that we have children right next to each other, in ways that are not COVID safe, are you?”