WATCH: Fox News’ Peter Doocy Cites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez During Immigration Skirmish with Biden Spox Jen Psaki
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy reached for some surprising backup as he jousted with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki over migrant detention facilities, citing progressive New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during Wednesday’s briefing.
The exchange marked day two of Doocy’s attempt to draw parallels between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump on their treatment of migrant children, while Psaki continued to cite the differences between the two administration’s approaches.
A few minutes into the exchange, however, Doocy asked Psaki to weigh in on a barb from AOC.
“Has the White House seen the comment from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, speaking about that HHS facility in Carrizo Springs, said ‘This is not okay. Never has been okay. Never will be okay, no matter the administration or party’?”
Psaki told Doocy that “I haven’t seen the full context” of Ocasio-Cortez’s comments, and added “but I would say the difficulty is what I outlined earlier.”
Repeating her earlier responses, Psaki told Doocy, “We have kids coming across the border, it is heartbreaking, I think we all as human beings are heartbroken, as parents, as mothers, fathers too.”
“We only have a couple of choices,” she continued. “What we are not doing is dividing these kids and separating from their parents at the border, which is what the last administration did, and why President Biden, then-candidate Biden and then-candidate Harris, were outspoken at the time about these kids being pulled from their parents.”
“What we are doing, working as quickly as possible to process these kids into this HHS facility, which has been revamped, which has medical and educational services available, so that we can then transfer them to families. That’s what our approach is,” Psaki added.
Doocy then asked if the administration would support allowing reporters “in to see what the difference is?”
Psaki told him that would be up to the Department of Homeland Security, and encouraged him to reach out to them.
AOC sent the tweet in question Tuesday afternoon with a link to an article that explained many of the facts that Psaki relayed to Doocy, that the facility accommodates unaccompanied minors and was opened in order to allow safe social distancing during the pandemic, and that the site had been upgraded to comply with or exceed state and federal standards.
Half an hour later, Ocasio-Cortez broadened her remarks into a critique of the entire immigration system, and noted that the Biden administration had not been in office long enough to make the sorts of changes she would like to see.
Watch the full exchange above via C-Span.
