No, she was not looking out over a mainly empty parking lot. If you saw the overview of the property from the air, there is parking by the fence, but beyond that parking is the detention center. And it is a detention center where children are being neglected, are being cared for by 8 year olds or older, not adults, and who are lacking clean clothes, diapers, and decent food. It is disgusting!
Is the Inspector General of Homeland Security lying when his report says this:
Confusion at the Border - FactCheck.org
The IG report said it visited five Border Patrol facilities in the
Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas, including border stations in
McAllen, Weslaco and
Brownsville, and two processing centers. The IG found that the agency is violating its own standards for care.
“During our visits to five Border Patrol facilities and two ports of entry in the Rio Grande Valley, we reviewed compliance with CBP’s Transport, Escort, Detention and Search (TEDS) standards, which govern CBP’s interaction with detained individuals, and observed serious overcrowding and prolonged detention of unaccompanied alien children (UACs), families, and single adults that require immediate attention,” the report said.
Contrary to McAleenan’s claim that migrant children are receiving “appropriate meals,” the IG report said: “While all facilities had infant formula, diapers, baby wipes, and juice and snacks for children, we observed that two facilities had not provided children access to hot meals — as is required by the TEDS standards — until the week we arrived. Instead, the children were fed sandwiches and snacks for their meals.”.....
As for McAleenan’s claim that children had access to “showers as soon as they can be provided,” the IG report found violations of the agency’s own standards.
“For example, children at three of the five Border Patrol facilities we visited had no access to showers, despite the TEDS standards requiring that ‘reasonable efforts’ be made to provide showers to children approaching 48 hours in detention,” the report said. “At these facilities, children had limited access to a change of clothes; Border Patrol had few spare clothes and no laundry facilities.”
The sanitary conditions were even worse for adults — including some who hadn’t had access to a shower for as long as a month.
Other members of congress visited the same facility as AOC and also said that the drinking fountains on the back of the toilets were not working, and women said they were told to drink from the toilet.
Not acceptable.
Then there is the Trump administration lawyer trying to say that soap and toothbrushes were not required to provide a safe and sanitary environment.
So yeah, intended or not, that picture mocked the migrants. Just because the facility itself was not a few feet from the fence does not mean it was not so far away that it was not visible, or that people like AOC cannot feel compassion and sadness for such treatment.
No death threats should have been given, but the parents should be ashamed of themselves for having their daughter mock what is a bad situation and one that America will regret in time, as it will be a black spot on our history, like the Japanese internment centers.
