During a press briefing earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the Biden administration’s decision to continue the use of detention centers for migrant children in response to Biden reopening a facility as the number of illegal border crossings has skyrocketed under the new administration.
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Psaki why the administration chose to reopen the facility, which Biden previously suggested was an abuse of human rights under the Trump administration.
“So it’s a temporary reopening during COVID-19,” Psaki responded. “Our intention is very much to close it, but we want to ensure that we can follow COVID protocols, as unaccompanied minors come into the United States.”
“But it’s the same facility that was open for a month in the Trump administration. Summer 2019, that is when Joe Biden said, under Trump, there have been horrifying scenes at the border of kids being kept in cages,” Doocy pointed out. “And Kamala Harris said, basically babies in cages is a human rights abuse being committed by the United States government. So how is this any different than that?”
“We very much feel that way. These are facilities, let me be clear here, one, there’s a pandemic going on,” she said. “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?”
“I’m suggesting that Kamala Harris said that this facility, putting people in this facility, was a human rights abuse committed by the United States government and Joe Biden said, under Trump there have been horrifying scenes at the border of kids being kept in cages,” Doocy said. “Now it’s not under Trump, it’s under Biden.”
“This is not kids being kept in cages,” she claimed, implying that the same structures that were “cages” under Trump are no longer cages. “This is kids, this is a facility that was opened, that’s going to follow the same standards as other HHS facilities, It is not a replication, certainly not, that’s never our intention of replicating the immigration policies of the past administration, but we are in a circumstance where we are not going to expel unaccompanied minors at the border, that would be inhumane. That is not what we are going to do here as an administration.”
