Former ICE director under Obama blows Dem’s ‘caged children’ narrative out of the water: ‘I was there’

For almost four years, Thomas Homan served as the executive associate director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Obama administration and he just put a major crimp in the Democrat Party’s narrative about President Trump caging children on the border.

When Democrats taking their rhetoric over the top in complaining about the caging of children — see chain link fencing — using the issue to push their political agenda, Homan reminded the country that the facilities in question where built on President Barack Obama’s watch.

“I’ve been to that facility, where they talk about cages,” Horan said Wednesday while taking part in a Center for Immigration Studies panel discussion. “That facility was built under President Obama, under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson.”

“Because I was there when it was built,” Horan said.

The facility is intended as a holding area until the minors are transferred to shelters, which is required to take place within 72 hours, but with a flood of humanity on the southern border, there were nearly 140,000 apprehensions in May alone, the system’s overwhelmed, resulting in serious delays and turning the facility into a housing unit.

According to an op-ed by Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., 56,278 unaccompanied minors have been apprehended so far in fiscal 2019. Webster said that as of early June, there are over 13,200 minors in the Department of Health and Human Services custody.

Horan was clear in discounting the crocodile tears coming from Democrats.

“So this message from the Democrats – there was one, I saw testimony not too long ago where [Rep.] Bennie Thompson asked, ‘Are you still keeping kids in cages? And Secretary [Kirstjen] Nielsen at the time, you know, she answered the question.”

“I would have answered the question: The kids are being housed in the same facilities built under the Obama administration. If you want to call them cages, call them cages,” he continued. “But if the left wants to call them cages, and the Democrats want to call them cages, then they have to accept the fact that they were built and funded in FY ’15.

“And I was there.”

Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Horan pointed out that the chain-link fencing is a safety feature.

“It’s chain link dividers that keeps children separate from unrelated adults. It’s about protecting children,” he said.

With the left targeting private companies that operate some of the facilities — Bank of America inexplicably announced Wednesday it will cut ties with these companies — Horan defended the practice.

“As far as are detention facilities for profit, these companies that work and bid for these contracts do it a hell of a lot cheaper than the government can do it,” he said. “I can tell you, I was the ICE director. The facilities ICE owns — those beds are the most expensive beds in the country. The federal government just don’t do things that good.”

Here are a few other observations Horan shared at the conference.

“Nothing happens on the northern border of Mexico without the blessing of the cartels,” Horan said. “For aliens to be smuggled through, they have to pay them off. What’s happening at our southern border is making these cartels very rich. We’re bankrolling them.”

On the deaths of migrants, Horan pointed out that many of them are in “bad shape” when apprehended and that the numbers are low compared to penal systems.

“People talk about deaths in ICE custody. The city of New York has eight times the number of deaths in custody than ICE does,” he said. “ICE’s rate is lower than nearly every penal system in this country. The problem is that when people come into ICE custody, many are in bad shape.”

In the end, the responsibility for the current crisis rests with the U.S. Congress.

“The people in Congress complaining about the conditions of people in custody are the very same people who are not giving the funding to make those facilities better,” Horan said. “What have they done to address the crisis at all? What has Congress done?”

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