Earlier this month, the ACLU directed a scathing letter at President Joe Biden (D) criticizing his move to continue President Donald Trump’s (R) immigration policies. In the letter, Naureen Shah, the senior advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU, said that it was “a disappointing step backward from the Biden administration’s earlier commitments to fully break from the harmful deportation policies of both the Trump and Obama presidencies.” With mounting criticism coming from prominent Democrats, both Oklahoma Senator James Lankford (R) and Lone Star state Senator Ted Cruz (R) were interviewed to discuss what they feel is a “hypocritical” stance after the Biden administration agreed to reopen a Texas child migration detention facility.
Slamming President Biden’s immigration policy, in an interview with The Floridian at CPAC in Orlando, Cruz said that “it certainly shows what rank hypocrites the media are because, for four years, they screamed ‘kids in cages.'" However, “Biden is now putting more kids in cages because his misguided immigration policies are bringing even more unaccompanied minors into the U.S. and suddenly the media finds them humane love centers instead.”
Oklahoma Senator James Lankford (R) echoed Cruz's remarks, telling The Floridian that “It is very hypocritical because… the Obama administration built the ‘cages’ for the kids at the border,” but he also clarified that “they’re not cages.”
Lankford further expressed that “When you’re handling thousands of people coming from across the border, you gotta have a triage location of where to be able to help move and manage people.” He noted that “that’s what the Obama built in 2014.” At that time, “there weren’t kids in cages... then, when President Trump comes, suddenly there are kids in cages. Now, the Biden team is using that exact same facility and saying ‘no, we’re not detaining people. We’re helping them transition.’”
Cruz fired back at the media, affirming that “Barack Obama built the cages. "The media didn’t care. The left didn’t care,” added Cruz. Cruz then said that "as soon as Trump got elected, they were horrified by it, then come January 20th suddenly everything was hunky-dory again.”
