President Trump on Sunday took to Twitter to slam the media for “writing phony and exaggerated accounts of Border Detention Centers” amid reports of overcrowding and alleged mistreatment of migrants at detention facilities along the southern U.S. border.
"The Fake News Media, in particular the Failing @nytimes, is writing phony and exaggerated accounts of the Border Detention Centers," Trump tweeted, referring to a report published by The New York Times on Sunday detailing conditions at a detention facility in Flint, Tex.
"First of all, people should not be entering our Country illegally, only for us to then have to care for them,” he declared. “We should be allowed to focus on United States Citizens first. Border Patrol, and others in Law Enforcement, have been doing a great job. We said there was a Crisis - the Fake News & the Dems said it was 'manufactured.'"
"Now all agree we were right, but they always knew that. They are crowded (which we brought up, not them) because the Dems won’t change the Loopholes and Asylum. Big Media Con Job!" Trump said.
Responding to claims of squalid conditions at detention facilities along the border, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan on Sunday defended his department’s handling of the influx of migrants, calling it, “an extraordinarily challenging situation.”
"We had an overflow situation with hundreds of children crossing every day. That’s why we were asking for funding for Health and Human Services, to provide adequate bed space so those children could be moved from that immediate border processing into a more appropriate setting for children,” McAleenan told ABC’s “This Week,” reported Politico.
“So, I’m not denying that there are challenging situations at the border," he continued. "I’ve been the one talking about it the most. What I can tell you right now is that there's adequate food, water, and that the reason those children were at Clint station in the first place is so they could have medical consolidated; they had shower facilities — for over a year there’s been showers there. So, this is why we try to provide a better situation for the brief time they’re supposed to spend at the border.”
Celebrities such as actress-activist Alyssa Milano and Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continue to push the narrative that migrants are being mistreated by U.S. Border Patrol despite accounts otherwise.
A recent op-ed in The New York Times called for the public shaming of Border Patrol agents "in their home communities" as a way to persuade them to either quit their jobs
Former ICE Director Tom Homan in an interview with Fox News last week called the op-ed “disgusting” and called the narrative being pushed by the left "false."
“I’ve been there," said Homan. "These Border Patrol are taking sickness home to their own families because they're taking care of sick children. They're changing diapers, they’re making formula. These agents did not sign up for this. They're fathers, mothers, sons and daughters themselves; they're doing a tremendous job and they need to be respected for it.”