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Joe Biden asserted that an essential difference between the administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump is that Obama did not "lock people up in cages".
At the Houston Democratic presidential debate in Houston on September 12, Univision, co-moderator of the debate, asked Biden why Latinos should trust him given the millions of deportations under Obama's presidency, while Biden was vice -President.
"What Latinos should be watching is that comparing this president to our president is outrageous, number one," Biden said. "We did not lock people in cages, we did not separate families, we did not do all those things, number one."
We found that Obama had no policy of separating families that were illegally arriving at the border and that separations under Trump were systematic as a result of his administration's policy of pursuing all adults crossing over. illegally the border.
But Biden mentioned "cages" in particular, and reporting since the time he was vice president, he described a pen for migrant children with this word.
Controversial use of cage description
The term "cages" has always been used by Democrats in the attacks on Trump and the detention of immigrants arriving at the border. The Trump administration says that the facilities that it uses are not cages.
The description was used to refer to chain link enclosures holding immigrants at the border processing facilities under the Obama and Trump administrations.
Notably, critics of Trump's "zero tolerance" policy, which led to the separation of families, circulated Photo during Trump's tenure, the children would have their heads on the ground behind a chain-link pen. However, the photo was from 2014, when Obama was president.
Our fact check showed that the Associated Press photo was taken in 2014 at a customs and border protection facility in Nogales, Arizona. It was used in an article from the Republic of Arizona on an influx of children arriving at the border unaccompanied by a parent or guardian. .
The article in the Arizona Republic said in part:
"They are undocumented, they entered the country illegally, and when they were apprehended by US Customs and Border Protection, they were sent to Nogales from overworked Texas processing facilities.
"But it's always children in cages, not gangsters, not delinquents. Just children, 900 of them, in a makeshift treatment center of a border town bigger than a football field. "
The article adds that children are "housed behind wire fences topped with razor wires".
An additional description of the enclosure stated: "Nylon tarpaulins, attached to fences, provide a minimum of privacy between groups and share the type of portable toilets used in fairs and construction sites, placed inside the cages and vented with dryer hoses. "
A report from the Los Angeles Times in 2014 described enclosures guarding immigrant children as "makeshift cages".
Here are other 2014 pictures of Getty Images, children kept in chain mesh speakers. For comparison, here is a 2018 photo provided by Customs and Border Protection, depicting immigrants in a similar diamond-meshed compound.
Jeh Johnson, former secretary of the US Homeland Security under the Obama administration, during interviews with the media and other forums, was asked about the use of cages during the Obama administration.
During an interview held in June 2019 at an event hosted by The Aspen Institute, Johnson was asked to talk about a photo showing him "moving past what appears to be children in cages ".
"Very clearly, chain link, barriers, bulkheads, fences, cages, no matter what you call them, were not invented on January 20, 2017, agree," Johnson said, adding that the photo had been taken during a peak on arrival. migrant children and that under the law, children must be transferred within 72 hours to the Department of Health and Social Services.
"But during this 72-hour period, when you have something multiple, about four times, of what you're used to in the existing infrastructure, you need to quickly find places to put the children. can not Just throw the 7-year-olds in the streets of McAllen or El Paso to create these facilities, this one was, I think, a big warehouse and to allow the separation of young women from the young women, men of, you know, children of adults, until they are released or transferred to HHS .Is that ideal? Of course not. "
Johnson sent the 2014 photo again next month to CBS's Face the Nation.
Johnson said, "The walls you see, some call them cages, are meant to separate women from men, girls from boys, but these were temporary."
Our decision
Biden said that the Obama administration "has not locked people in cages".
Obama and Trump's immigration policies are very different. The Trump administration has put in place a policy that has led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents. Obama did not have this policy.
But telling Biden that the Obama administration did not put people in a cage is inaccurate. In 2014, Obama and Biden saw children arrive at the border without parents or guardians. According to a 2014 report by Arizona Republic, a chain link fence would hold children as "cages". A former US Secretary of Homeland Security Obama admitted that some had labeled the pens used during Obama's term as "cages".
There is a debate about whether a chain link speaker is a "cage" and whether to apply that term to these structures is subjective. But the term was certainly used in 2014 to describe the enclosures used by the Obama administration.
We evaluate Biden's request for False.
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