Jen Psaki and Meghan McCain Battle Over Child Migrant Facility: ‘We Are Not Ripping Kids From the Arms of Their Parents’
Meghan McCain pressed White House press secretary Jen Psaki regarding the Biden administration’s decision to re-open a child migrant facility used while Donald Trump was president.
“President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly spoke out against kids in cages,” McCain said. “I feel like this he same thing, and that you’re still detaining kids at the border and it’s not meaningfully different than what President Trump was doing.”
Psaki insisted that what President Joe Biden and his administration were doing was nothing like Trump’s practice of detaining migrant children, adding, “We are not ripping kids from the arms of their parents.”
McCain is right to say that an emergency facility in Texas was reactivated this week to temporarily house roughly 700 teenaged children, as reported by the Washington Post, and which Psaki has repeatedly explained as a response to capacity restrictions amid the pandemic.
“What we’re seeing is kids who are fleeing persecution,” Psaki said. “They’re fleeing really difficult circumstances in their home country, and they’re coming to the border, and we need to figure out how to treat them humanely and keep them safe, and in the time of Covid, that meant we had to open an additional facility.”
She went on to note that the children will have access to education and medical services while in the facilities, adding that they will be “treated humanely.”
“This is incredibly difficult. It’s heart-wrenching and it’s a really difficult decision, but it’s the best decision we felt we could make to keep these kids safe and get them into the right places and the right homes,” Psaki added.
McCain then asked for clarity regarding the separation of these children from their families, asking if the children are being kept in another facility before highlighting that the Biden administration is getting push back from progressive Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
Psaki stressed that the facility was “reopened, revamped, and redone,” adding that the administration cannot send them to families that have not been vetted.
“We are absolutely not doing what the former president did,” Psaki insisted.
Joy Behar then cut in to note that she read that some of the children have already reunited with their families, adding, “how is it in anybody’s mind the same as what when on before? It’s outrageous.”
Watch above, via ABC.
