The Truth About Border Children

Written by Israel Wayne

The liberal media has tried to cast a negative light on the Trump administration’s handling of children who are detained at the border. While the situation is undoubtedly heartbreaking, there is more to the story than the media has been highlighting.

1.) The Obama administration, not the Trump administration, built the “cages” that were used for detaining children at the border.

Even the most liberal of media sources acknowledge this, though in the small print, amidst a slew of accusations against Trump.

Fact check: Did Obama Admin Build Cages That House Immigrant Children at U.S.-Mexico Border?

Snopes.com: “True. The Obama administration, not the Trump administration, built the cages that hold many immigrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Fact check: Obama administration approved, built temporary holding enclosures at southern border.

USA Today: “We rate this claim TRUE, based on our research. The initial claim correctly attributes migrant holding facilities to the Obama administration.”

2.) The Obama administration ALSO separated children from their parents!

Fact check: Did the Obama administration separate families at the southern U.S. border?

LA Times: “Yes, U.S. border officials did separate children from their parents on occasion.”

This is a fact, despite Biden’s bald-faced lie that he and Obama never used “cages” or separated children from their parents.

3.) Children are often brought into our country by human traffickers who claim to be parents but have no legal documentation. For the safety of these trafficked children, they must be separated from people who are falsely claiming parentage.

Michael Albence, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says, “Frankly, it’s a new area of trafficking that we didn’t see before and that’s the recycling of children. Children that are being utilized and sold and rented in Central America and Mexico; given to unrelated adults for the sole purpose of them coming into the country illegally and posing as a family ….” – Breitbart.com

4.) The “cages” were actually large partitioned chain link areas inside an enclosed warehouse area and were used by both the Obama/Biden and Trump administrations for the 72-hour protection of the children, not for their harm.

You can see the photos the facilities the Obama/Biden administration built and used (that are still being used by the Trump administration for the same purpose) here.

“”You can’t just dump 7-year-old kids on the streets of McAllen or El Paso. And so, these facilities were erected … they put those chain-link partitions up so you could segregate young women from young men, kids from adults, until they were either released or transferred to HHS. Was it ideal? Of course not.” – (Jeh Johnson, Barack Obama’s Homeland Security)

5.) Many staged fake photos have been widely circulated purporting to represent the conditions of children at the border, but some are literally mannequins or children placed in cages by their own parents at anti-Trump rallies.

Fact check: Photos of ‘children in cages’ don’t show migrant kids in U.S.

Reuters: “A post claiming to show small cages holding migrant children who are sprayed with chemicals every day contains misleading and false information … Superimposed onto the images in the first post is a screenshot of a headline from The New York Times, which reads: ‘U.S. loses track of another 1500 migrant children, investigators find.’ … Firstly, these photos do not show real children.” (There was also no evidence that children were sprayed with chemicals.)

CNN: “A photo of a little boy crying in a cage is being shared on social media as seemingly another heart-rending byproduct of the White House’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy, which separates undocumented parents and kids at the border.” “There’s only one problem: The picture is being completely taken out of context — and does not show what it is purported to show … (T)he picture was actually taken during a June 10 protest against White House immigration policies at Dallas City Hall, as first reported by fact-checking site Snopes … (T)he toddler was following his older sibling, who took part in the Dallas cage protest along with other teens. ‘He got confused on how to get out (of the cage) and cried when he saw his mother,’ Pena said. ‘He was only in there about 30 seconds.’”

6.) Many of the real photos of children in cages used in articles by journalists are actually from 2014 and were taken during the Obama administration, not the Trump administration.

CNN: “It is not the first time that alarming photos of caged children have been wrongly attributed to Trump administration policies. A photograph showing two immigrant children sleeping in a fenced enclosure, which sparked outrage when it surfaced last month, turned out to have been taken in an Arizona detention facility in 2014.”

7.) Children are not currently being held in cages and have been far better cared for than the media has led you to believe. Even the liberal NPR admits this:

NPR: “‘We want to show you that these are not kids kept in cages,’ said Alexia Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the Texas nonprofit Southwest Key that operates the shelter. ‘We provide them excellent care.’ … (R)eporters were allowed a rare glimpse inside Casa Padre, a 250,000-square-foot facility located on the outskirts of Brownsville across from a pizza joint and a McDonald’s. The boys confined there waved, smiled and said “hola” to the group of visiting journalists … The ratio is one adult counselor to eight children, to keep them in line and to watch for behavioral and emotional problems  … (T)he boys were shooting baskets, kicking soccer balls, playing video games, watching a movie, sitting in classrooms where they were taught about the U.S. government, learning tai chi and chowing down on a meal of chicken and mixed vegetables.”

8.) Children are not being held in cages for months or years as is often claimed. There is a 72-hour limit for children to be held by border patrol. According to the LA Times, the 500 children Biden spoke of are no longer being detained at the border.

Fact check: Where are the children of the more than 500 parents who are being sought? Biden said the “kids are alone” with “nowhere to go.” Trump said they are in clean facilities and well taken care of. Who’s right?

LA Times: “Neither. The children are no longer in U.S. detention centers; they are with extended family members in the U.S. or with foster families.”

What happens to these children:

Houston Chronicle: “Unaccompanied minors can be held by the Border Patrol for up to 72 hours and are then transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The children are taken to shelters around the country while case workers try to find them suitable sponsors. Sponsors must be a parent, legal guardian or immediate relative. The government also checks for potential sponsors’ legal immigration status, which advocates say has deterred relatives of children from trying to take them. Children are placed in foster homes when suitable sponsors are not found. After children are released to a parent or relative, guardians must make sure the kids attend immigration court hearings and check in regularly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

9.) As a parent myself, there is no way the U.S. government would not know of my whereabouts if I had a child taken from my own arms at the border. There is a legal pathway for these children to be reunited with their parents … if the parents want them.

Again, this highlights the fact that many of these children have not been taken from real, loving parents who personally brought them into the country. Many of these children are with relatives here in the U.S., and the parents could easily be contacted if they wanted the children back, unless they are incarcerated for illegal drug trafficking or other crimes.

Many people seem to forget that legal immigration into our country is still an option! You don’t have to sneak across the border in the middle of the night with no documentation. There is a pathway to legal citizenship, and that is the only method that should be utilized. If parents don’t want to run the risk of being separated from their children at the border (and what parent in their right mind would?), don’t try to sneak into our country (especially with no proof of parentage).

10.) Illegal Immigration Will Continue.

One must ask why so many people are flooding into America from Mexico, Central and South America?

Socialism has economically devastated Bolivia, Ecuador (formerly socialist), El Salvador (formerly socialist), Nicaragua and Venezuela, and other nations where interventionist and corrupt governments have ruled with a heavy hand.

Terrorism has been unchecked in many of these nations, causing fear and upheaval.

There are also many places in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America where drug cartels rule as a kind of mafia, even controlling local governments.

Many suffering citizens in these locations look to America as a beacon of light because they know we operate under the rule of law, and have an adequately funded police force to keep terrorism and anarchy restrained.

We do not allow drug traffickers, human traffickers and terrorists to come into our country through undocumented means, thus making it much safer for all who live here. We do, however, offer legal pathways of citizenship for non-criminals who choose to utilize them.

Hopefully Americans will see past the one-sided political propaganda being presented by a false narrative leveled against the Trump administration, who has only continued what went on under Obama/Biden. There are no easy answers to difficult situations like these, but the U.S. has done far better than they are currently accused of doing by the leftist news media.

Israel Wayne is an author and conference speaker, and the Director of Family Renewal, and the the father of eleven children. He writes on Politics, Education, Worldviews, Religion, Cultural Issues and Philosophy at the ChristianWorldview.net blog (where he serves as Site Editor).

He is the author of the books Raising Them Up: Parenting for Christians, Questions God Asks, Questions Jesus Asks and Pitchin’ a Fit: Overcoming Angry and Stressed-Out Parenting, Education: Does God Have an Opinion? & Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask.

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