Obama appointee confirms: Kids 'cages' created 'under Obama'

A screenshot of the Drudge Report on June 20, 2018, saying President Obama kept migrant children in cages and wrapped them in foil

President Obama's top official in charge of removing illegal aliens has confirmed that the "cages" used to detain juveniles who are in the country illegally were established by the Obama administration.

"I've been to that facility, where they talk about cages. That facility was built under President Obama under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson," said Thomas Homan, Obama's executive associate director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"I was there … when it was built," he said, reported Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner.

Democrats made the facilities an emotional political issue, widely distributing an image of a crying child "in a cage."

But it was later revealed that the photograph was taken during Obama's tenure in the White House.

Homan now is under consideration for the new position of "border czar."

He expressed anger at questions about the "cages."

At a conference held by the Center for Immigration Studies, he cited a Democrat who demanded of a Trump official: "You still keeping kids in cages?"

Homan said he would answer the question with: "The kids are being housed in the same facility built under the Obama administration."

The former Obama official said at the conference that if you "want to call them cages, call them cages."

"But if the left wants to call them cages and the Democrats want to call them cages then they have to accept the fact that they were built and funded in FY 2015," he said.

He explained that there actually are no cages. It's "chain-link fencing that separates kids from adults, done for safety."

Homan said the facilities are used partly because a Democratic Congress hasn't provided adequate funding for the surge of illegal aliens entering the U.S.

President Trump, according to Business Insider, accurately pointed out that the Obama administration used the "cages" for children at the border.

The report noted the criticism of Trump's administration for using the facilities, "though a lesser-known detail is that those same cages have been used for years, albeit under different circumstances."

The Blaze reported Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., assured Americans that Democrats never would put children in cages.

Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol that ICE's enforcement actions are "outside the circle of civilized human behavior."

She criticized President Trump for taking a definitive stance on illegal immigration.

"It's ridiculous to think that the way to protect the border is to put children in cages," she said. "Democrats have taken full responsibility for the border, but we don't think we have to put children in cages to do it."