The Trumpkin Village showed the cages filled with male prisoners to assure their base they aren’t all soft
by digby
The most prosperous nation on earth, one which brags of record highs on its stock market and record low unemployment, is showing the world these conditions to prove it’s a cruel, small, vengeful nation in order to appease its narcissistic barbarian of a leader.
Biggest takeaway from this visit is that these were the visuals White House wanted. Note, only men. https://t.co/1U2SbaAtG2— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 13, 2019
I had assumed they’d only show footage of a nice, clean facility where everyone was smiling and singing. They did that. But they also allowed this to be shown which very clearly shows that the supposedly very pious ultra Christian Vice President and GOP leadership don’t give a damn about these people. They don’t even attempt to talk to them. They appear to be looking at them as if they are in a zoo, being lectured about their mating habits by the zoo-keeper.
That was the plan. Deterrence is the plan. And this is the plan:
Here’s the pool report of the encounter:
After negotiating with the VP’s office, pool was taken into an outdoor portal atthe McAllen Border Station around 5 pm, where almost 400 men were in cagedfences with no cots. The stench was horrendous.
The cages were so crowded that it would have been impossible for all of the men to lie on the concrete. There were 384 single men in the portal who allegedly crossed the border illegally. There were no mats or pillows — some of the men
were sleeping on concrete.When the men saw the press arrive, they began shouting and wanted to tell us they’d been in there 40 days or longer. The men said they were hungry and wanted to brush their teeth. It was sweltering hot. Agents were guarding the cages wearing face masks.
Water was available outside the fences, and agents said the men could leave and
get water when the press wasn’t there.Most of the men did not speak English and looked dirty. They said they’d been there for 40 days or more upon questioning from the pool.
We were pulled out of the portal within 90 seconds, and a White House official said the Secret Service had expressed opposition to the Vice President going in.
He briefly went into the room.
“I was not surprised by what I saw,” Pence said later at a news conference. “I knew we’d see a system that was overwhelmed.”
“This is tough stuff,” he said. He said he was calling for Democrats to fund more ICE beds and had pushed for more DHS spending because of the situation, including a $4.6 billion humanitarian aid package that he negotiated.
The pool was then arranged a briefing with Michael Banks, the patrol agent in
charge of the McAllen situation.He said the men are allowed to brush their teeth once a day and have been told that. “We currently have 88,000 toothbrushes,” he said.
He said they were given deodorant after showering but conceded many of the men had not showered for 10 or 20 days because the facility previously didn’t have showers.
He said the facility now has a trailer shower, which came in Thursday.
He said the longest any man had been there was 32 days. He said the facility was cleaned three times a day, but it did not seem that way, and that it was air conditioned, but it did not feel that way.
He said the men were given three hot meals a day from local restaurants, along with juice and crackers.
He said the men could not get cots because there would be no room for them all to sleep if they were given cots. They are given a Mylar blanket, he said. The thin blankets could be heard cracking.
He said another 275 women were living in air conditioned Army repurposed tents
.
Just before that, we were rushed into a small command-center room, called the “bubble,” where immigration officials were briefing the Republican senators and Vice President. Crowded cells could be seen all around. 382 men were in the cells, many of them appeared quite young and some shirtless, and they pressed their faces up against the window to see the commotion.The men are in the cells or in the portal until ICE can take them, Banks said. The Vice President asked a few questions but most of the talking was done by Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Before, the Vice President briefly visited the technical operations center, where he saw troops and border patrol agents monitoring 15 sensor cameras on the wall. The screens would go red when they would sense movement of people crossing the border. The cameras monitor 47 miles of the border, officials said.
He stayed for about 90 seconds and shook one officer’s hand.
Pence was clearly discombobulated by the sights and smells because he forgot that the Democrats passed the funding bill.
We spend millions on the president’s golf games and skimming from the taxpayers to support his businesses. They just blew through many more for that stupid July 4th pageant in DC for no good reason. But we have disgusting, overcrowded internment camps within our own borders. And apparently, we want the world to see that.
Because then foreigners will respect us.
.