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Border Facilities’ Woes Exaggerated, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Says

Congress passed a $4.6 billion emergency spending bill aimed at improving conditions for migrants apprehended at the border.

Border Facilities’ Woes Exaggerated, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Says
A placard with a Rainbow flag reading “Close Trump Concentration Camps” is displayed during a #CloseTheCamps protest outside the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. (Photographer: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said Sunday that problems at U.S. border facilities have been exaggerated by the news media, and he demanded that Democrats in Congress change asylum laws to make it more difficult for migrants to claim refuge in the U.S.

“The Fake News Media, in particular the Failing @nytimes, is writing phony and exaggerated accounts of the Border Detention Centers,” Trump said on Twitter, a reference to the New York Times, which published a report Sunday describing squalid conditions at one Texas facility. “They are crowded (which we brought up, not them) because the Dems won’t change the Loopholes and Asylum.”

Trump also told reporters before returning to Washington from his golf club in New Jersey that the Times story was “a fabrication.” He said the administration will start showing detention centers to the news media to demonstrate the conditions. The Times stood by its story in a tweet on Sunday.

The president’s tweets and comments to reporters came after top immigration officials on Sunday morning defended conditions at the migrant processing facilities in response to media reports and criticism from Democrats about the treatment, including a lack of food for some children.

“We have no evidence that children went hungry,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Border Facilities’ Woes Exaggerated, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Says

McAleenan said the Times story about conditions at the facility in Clint, Texas, was unsubstantiated because “there’s adequate food and water, because the facility’s cleaned every day, because I know what our standards are and I know they’ve been followed because we have tremendous levels of oversight. Five levels of oversight.”

The newspaper responded to Trump, saying in a tweet that the story was based on dozens of interviews by the Times and The El Paso Times, including with current and former Border Patrol agents and supervisors, and “we are confident in the accuracy of our reporting on the U.S. Border Patrol’s detention centers.”

McAleenan acknowledged the challenges at the facilities, which the independent DHS inspector general last week called dangerously overcrowded in some cases. The report said children at three of five Texas facilities had no access to showers, no laundry facilities and limited access to a change of clothes.

“It’s an extraordinarily challenging situation,” McAleenan said, noting more than 500,000 people have crossed the southern border since Dec. 30. “We’re trying to provide as much space and as much nice a setting as we possibly can while children are in our custody.”

Emergency Spending

Congress last week passed a $4.6 billion emergency spending bill aimed at improving conditions for migrants apprehended at the southern border. The bill didn’t contain added protections for child migrants proposed by House Democrats -- who sought to release migrants from sub par detention facilities -- after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider the Democrats’ demands.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli said on “Fox News Sunday” that he thought the facilities were in pretty good shape. He said House Democrats are to blame for poor conditions because they won’t fund more detention beds for immigrants and because they won’t change laws to make it harder to seek asylum claim at the border.

“Ultimately they are complaining about the numbers they are attracting here,” he said.

Fewer Children

Asked about the inspector general’s report, Cuccinelli said that over the past month, the number of children in overcrowded detention has dropped dramatically.

“It is already changed,” he said. “That is not happening with respect to children.”

McAleenan said the number of children in custody has declined to 350 as of Saturday from 2,500 on June 1, thanks to the additional funding from Congress.

Cuccinelli said the administration would like language to change asylum rules attached to a must-pass piece of legislation, but he demurred when asked specifically whether the White House would try to use a measure to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

“Those false claims are coming because Congress, especially the House, refuses to take the steps necessary to fix the loopholes that you can drive a truck through,” he said.

House Democratic leaders have yet to set any immigration bill on its July agenda.

Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, on Sunday outlined four steps he wants Trump to take to address the migrant influx.

He said DHS should improve conditions at holding facilities, hire more agents and immigration judges to process migrants at ports of entry, create a process for people from Central American nations to apply for asylum and install permanent leadership at DHS.

“While incompetence is rife in this administration, including at the Department of Homeland Security, there is clearly more at play here,” the Mississippi Democrat said. “Since taking office, President Trump and his administration have ignored the rule of law and thrown well established norms out the window in order to push their anti-immigrant agenda.”

--With assistance from Laura Davison.

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Wasson in Washington at ewasson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Mark Niquette, Ros Krasny

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