‘It Feels Like a Jail’: Lawmakers Criticize Migrant Holding Sites on Border

Women kept in rooms without running water, sleeping bags set up on the concrete, and kids left their families apart: that's what Democratic lawmakers said they heard of on Monday as they visited two Texas border installations.

Their emotional and graphic descriptions came on a day when ProPublica revealed that a secret Facebook group existed for present and former officials of the Border Patrol. Posts on the group's website included jokes about the fatalities of migrants, obscene GIFs, and Hispanic lawmakers ' doctoral pictures, the study said. Some of the most offensive articles have been addressed to New York Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Monday's border visit by more than a dozen Congress members— including Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas— was a particular focus of some of the Facebook violence, reported ProPublica. One post used vulgar language to encourage officers at the two females to "hurl a burrito."

In a sequence of tweets describing the visit, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez shot back at the group on Monday night. "These policemen felt brazen in there," she said, pointing out that before the visit members of the parliamentary delegation were requested to surrender their phones. “While mgmt was telling us it was a‘ secure facility' where* members of Congress* had to check their phones, we caught officers trying to sneak photos, laughing.”

She added, referring to the parent organization, Customs and Border Protection of the Border Patrol: "The ' excellent ' conduct of CBP was poisonous. Imagine how the females trapped inside are treated."

Border Patrol head Carla Provost said the posts on Facebook were "totally inappropriate," adding that "any employee discovered to have breached our norms of behavior will be held responsible." Customs and Border Protection said on Monday night that it was opening a Facebook group inquiry.

The ProPublica report further intensified the tense atmosphere discovered on their planned tour of installations in Clint and El Paso by the group of Democratic legislators.

"It feels like a prison," said Massachusetts representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, "and they are being treated as if they were in prison."

"It's broken the whole scheme," he said. "They deserve better than this and better than this, our nation deserves."

In a tweet, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that Customs and Border Protection "did a lot of ' clean up ' before we came." She said females told her they had gone 15 days without a shower and had been permitted to begin bathing just four days earlier after the presidential visit was announced.

Some females, she said, informed her when the faucet broke in their cell they were compelled to drink from the toilet. An official for customs and border protection refused to comment on the charge.

At a Monday evening news conference, the emotional descriptions of lawmakers were almost entirely drowned out by vulgar and racist heckling from a couple of demonstrators, some carrying Trump 2020 banners and posters calling for tougher border safety, deportation, and building a wall on the southwest frontier.

"Bunch of knuckleheads," one guy shouted as lawmakers attempted to explain what they had seen at an El Paso Border Patrol station and a Clint migrant facility. "Break the onions out," cried a lady, mocking how some Democrats in front of the microphones became visibly emotional.

"We don't want Muslims here," another shouted, minutes before one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, vowed to "love your malice."

"You can shout at me everybody," she said. "I'm never going to stop talking to the authority about reality."

Immigration protesters added to the tumult as they attempted to fight insults and heckles with lawmakers ' assistance.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus had organized the day trip to the Texas border after reports of children being held in squalor in the Clint facility, accusations Trump administration officials have vigorously denied. The group also visited a facility affiliated with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

But lawmakers arose from Border Patrol facilities describing living circumstances that were unsuitable for holding adults or kids, with Cuban, Honduran, and Guatemalan women — including grandmothers and a young pregnant woman — sharing cells, some weeping from guards ' fear of punishment for sharing their tales.

Pennsylvania's representative Madeleine Dean said she was originally scolded by an official for mimicking an air hug to a migrant kid in an interview. Lawmakers said the migrants were told not to talk.

But in the end, the group spoke at the facilities with a number of migrants. A group of women, some with tear-stained cheeks, can be seen huddling in blue sleeping bags in pictures and videos taken by Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas, the head of the Hispanic caucus, on a device smuggled into the facility. They informed lawmakers they had no access to drugs. These charges were rejected by officials.

In an interview, Ms. Dean recalled when she asked a lady what brought her to the facility, "The lady said: ' I crossed that fucking river. I wanted to come to the United States. This is an offense to me. '"

Most of the Democratic legislators on the journey to Texas last month voted against a package of $4.6 billion in humanitarian aid, citing worries about sending more federal cash to the frontier without rigorous supervision. The visit seemed to harden their determination.

"When I forced myself into a cell w / women&began to talk to them, one of them defined their therapy as ' psychological warfare ' at the hands of policemen," Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Monday. "Do you tell me that's because of a lack of financing? '

President Trump signed the assistance package into law soon after the lawmakers wrapped up their news conference.

"I don't understand what they're saying about Congress representatives," Mr. Trump said Monday to journalists. "I understand the Democrats in Congress are not pleased with the Border Patrol."