In July of 2014, during the Obama administration, the Washington Post wrote:
“The most obvious and direct cause of the flood of children from Central America is the 2008 human trafficking law that ended the rapid deportation of unaccompanied minors who come illegally from countries other than Mexico and Canada. The law, which cleared both houses of Congress by unanimous consent and was signed by George W. Bush in his final days in office, was bipartisan and well intentioned — but it was exploited by the very traffickers it was meant to target, who encouraged this huge emigration of children from Central America.”
Trump’s press secretary Sarah Sanders pointed out this week: “… Frankly, this law was actually signed into effect in 2008 under her [Laura Bush’s] husband’s leadership, not under this administration. We’re not… responsible for creating this problem; we’ve inherited it. But we’re actually the first administration stepping up and trying to fix it.”
Images courtesy of Breitbart Texas.
Sanders reminded that “…it is Congress’s job to change the law. We’re calling on them to do exactly that.”
As to the environment in which people are being held, photographs show the current facilities are much softer, child-friendly, and comfortable than those used by the Obama administration.
As to the short-term holding areas, Breitbart Texas’ Brandon Darby points out via Twitter, in regard to the so-called cages, “The chainlink partitions in the holding facilities at border are the exact same ones we showed you during the Obama Admin.”
Darby added the key question: “Why didn’t you care then?”
They didn’t care because a Democrat was in charge then and now it’s a Republican. That is one of the reasons the accusatory comments from Laura Bush, Joe Straus and others on the subject are so egregious.
I fear that we can’t win with these people. If they had put them in enclosures with foam mattresses separating them, a large group would have complained that the kids were vulnerable since the foam mattresses were not secure enough. There Is no reason to even talk with these people as they will accept nothing we have to offer.