News Opinons Politics

Fact Check: Ocasio-Cortez Says Democrats Must Rally Behind Biden Because ‘We Have Had Kids in Cages’

CLAIM: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said during an April appearance on The View that Democrats must rally behind Joe Biden (D), the Democrat Party’s presumptive nominee, because it is an issue of “life and death,” stating, “We have had kids in cages.”

VERDICT: The “cages” Democrats frequently refer to — chain-link enclosures in certain border facilities — were set up during the Obama-Biden administration, virtually diminishing one of the main reasons Ocasio-Cortez believes it is important for Democrats to support Biden.

Ocasio-Cortez appealed to the false left-wing talking point during an April 15 appearance on the The View in response to cohost Whoopi Goldberg, who asked the lawmaker, “Do you think it’s time to have a conversation with Joe?”


“Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I think right now just the stakes are too high when it comes to another four years of Trump,” Ocasio-Cortez said, stating that her community “especially” has been impacted.

“And it’s, you know, for a lot of communities, this is an issue of life and death. We have had kids in cages,” she claimed, also criticizing the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.


Five Republicans Break Ranks With Trump on Venezuela, Cripple His Ability to Use Military in Country Again
Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Rhetoric: Huge NYC Crowd Chants That They’ll Kill Noem, ICE Agents
Minnesota ICE shooting ignites debate over federal officer immunity
Watchdog exposes taxpayer-funded teacher program for banning White applicants: ‘Likely illegal’
Thousands already applied for Minnesota’s new paid leave program open to illegal immigrants
Venezuela raid is about the oil — keeping it from Russia and China
President Trump says there won’t be a ‘second Wave of Attacks’ against Venezuela due to their ‘cooperation’
Brigitte Bardot, 1934–2025
Washington’s echo: America and Europe at a crossroads once more 
A decade without David Bowie
Catholic group asks SCOTUS to block California law against revealing students’ gender identities to parents
White House says East Wing demolition was necessary due to structural issues
Trump plans to meet with Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado next week
550-pound bear finally evicted from California home after bizarre strategy ends monthlong ordeal
Naked woman allegedly assaults deputy while intoxicated, claims she was ‘trying to be a mermaid’

See also  Key lawmakers to watch as Congress faces another looming shutdown deadline

“I think it’s really important that we rally behind our Democratic nominee in November,” she added:

Despite Ocasio-Cortez’s insinuation, the “cages” she and her Democrat allies consistently refer to were constructed during the Obama-Biden administration — not President Trump’s. Even Jeh Johnson, secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama-Biden administration, admitted that existing structures were not invented at the start of Trump’s term.

“Chain link barriers, partitions, fences, cages, whatever you want to call them, were not invented on January 20, 2017, OK?” Johnson said during an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival last year, responding to the viral 2014 photo depicting the controversial holding facilities:

Johnson continued:

But during that 72-hour period, when you have something that is a multiple — like four times — of what you’re accustomed to in the existing infrastructure, you’ve got to find places quickly to put kids. You can’t just dump seven-year-old kids on the streets of McAllen or El Paso. And so these facilities were erected.


Five Republicans Break Ranks With Trump on Venezuela, Cripple His Ability to Use Military in Country Again
Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Rhetoric: Huge NYC Crowd Chants That They’ll Kill Noem, ICE Agents
Minnesota ICE shooting ignites debate over federal officer immunity
Watchdog exposes taxpayer-funded teacher program for banning White applicants: ‘Likely illegal’
Thousands already applied for Minnesota’s new paid leave program open to illegal immigrants
Venezuela raid is about the oil — keeping it from Russia and China
President Trump says there won’t be a ‘second Wave of Attacks’ against Venezuela due to their ‘cooperation’
Brigitte Bardot, 1934–2025
Washington’s echo: America and Europe at a crossroads once more 
A decade without David Bowie
Catholic group asks SCOTUS to block California law against revealing students’ gender identities to parents
White House says East Wing demolition was necessary due to structural issues
Trump plans to meet with Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado next week
550-pound bear finally evicted from California home after bizarre strategy ends monthlong ordeal
Naked woman allegedly assaults deputy while intoxicated, claims she was ‘trying to be a mermaid’

See also  Tim Walz to hold press conference on Monday amid rumors he will not run for reelection

Biden has also denied the Obama administration’s role in constructing the “cages,” telling Univision’s Jorge Ramos in September, “We didn’t lock people up in cages.”

As Breitbart News reported:

Biden claimed that the Obama administration’s policies were more humane than those of President Donald Trump: “We didn’t lock people up in cages,” he said.

In fact, the “cages” were built by the Obama administration to deal with a surge of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border illegally in 2014.


Five Republicans Break Ranks With Trump on Venezuela, Cripple His Ability to Use Military in Country Again
Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Rhetoric: Huge NYC Crowd Chants That They’ll Kill Noem, ICE Agents
Minnesota ICE shooting ignites debate over federal officer immunity
Watchdog exposes taxpayer-funded teacher program for banning White applicants: ‘Likely illegal’
Thousands already applied for Minnesota’s new paid leave program open to illegal immigrants
Venezuela raid is about the oil — keeping it from Russia and China
President Trump says there won’t be a ‘second Wave of Attacks’ against Venezuela due to their ‘cooperation’
Brigitte Bardot, 1934–2025
Washington’s echo: America and Europe at a crossroads once more 
A decade without David Bowie
Catholic group asks SCOTUS to block California law against revealing students’ gender identities to parents
White House says East Wing demolition was necessary due to structural issues
Trump plans to meet with Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado next week
550-pound bear finally evicted from California home after bizarre strategy ends monthlong ordeal
Naked woman allegedly assaults deputy while intoxicated, claims she was ‘trying to be a mermaid’

Originally, the Obama administration was “warehousing” children — literally — in overwhelmed Border Patrol facilities. Breitbart News broke the story of the surge, which was partly triggered by Obama’s policy of allowing illegal alien children who entered the country as minors to stay in the country (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA).

Even PolitiFact deemed it “inaccurate” for Biden to claim that Obama’s administration did not put people in “cages,” and left-wing Snopes rated the claim “The Obama administration, not the Trump administration, built the cages that hold many immigrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border” as “true.”

Ocasio-Cortez has a history of making controversial statements regarding migrant detention centers, setting off a political firestorm last summer after accusing the Trump administration of running “concentration camps.”

“That is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps,” Ocasio-Cortez said of migrant detention centers during an Instagram Live last June.

“The fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it,” she added.

Story cited here.

See also  Maria Machado praises Trump for his ‘courageous visions’ and ‘historical actions’
Share this article:
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter