‘This is Not a Zoo, Sir’: Ted Cruz Posts Video of Confrontation With Staffer at Border Facility

Senator Ted Cruz recently led a delegation of 18 Republican senators to the border facilities in Donna, Texas, and posted a video that he shot of at least one crowded holding area, ignoring the pleas of an unnamed staffer asking the Texas senator to respect the facilities rules.

At issue is a seasonal rise in undocumented migrants approaching the Southern U.S. border, largely coming from Central America, which is being used as a political cudgel against the Biden Administration by many Republican elected officials. The video shot and published by Cruz is clearly flouting the rules of the facilities, as an unidentified staffer tries to intercede while Cruz makes political points for viewers to hear.

Cruz uses the specious term “political operative” to describe the staffer who asks the Senator to “please give dignity to the people,” and “please respect the rules.” When Cruz asks if putting so many individuals in a crowded room during a pandemic is dignified, the staffer says “this is not a zoo, sir.”

Watch the video below.

The political argument being made by Cruz and others is that President Joe Biden’s political rhetoric during his successful bid for the White House encouraged the flood of migrants, which has overcrowded facilities to inhumane levels and become a crisis.  While many in the media have been quick to label the current situation a “crisis,” a leaked internal memo from the Associated Press dispassionately explains why it does not rise to a crisis.

Supporters of Senator Cruz will see this video as confirmation that Biden policies at the border are a mess, though the current administration has only been in office for roughly 10 weeks, hardly enough time to unravel as complicated and complex an issue like immigration and the U.S. humanitarian aid that the Trump administration cut to the triangle countries of Central American from where the majority of migrants have come.

Critics of Cruz will likely see this as demagoguery of a complicated issue from a senator who was entirely in support of the Trump administration’s more draconian policies of separating undocumented children from parents as a deterrent. USA TODAY reported recently that over 600 children were effectively left orphaned as a result of that policy, which Senator Cruz falsely defended at the time.