“U.S. Border Patrol was holding more than 4,200 unaccompanied migrant children in short-term holding facilities, including jail-like stations unfit to house minors…” — cbs News, 3/15/21

“It’s much different from [Trump’s kids in cages]… We have people … in those facilities taking care of them. But my hope is they all are able to get out, all are able to get into licensed facilities and/or be united with family members here in the United States.” — Joe Biden, when Univision interviewer described minors being warehoused in “facilities that … bring back memories from the kids in cages, and how is it different from that?” quoted at Mediaite, 2/27/21

“Comparing … President [Obama] to [Trump] is outrageous, number one. We didn’t lock people up in cages. We didn’t separate families. We didn’t do all of those things, number one.” — Joe Biden, third Democratic Presidential debate; Obama and Biden did indeed do all of those things, Real Clear Politics, 9/12/19

As you know, the whole “cages” narrative was fake news to smear Donald Trump. The media worked tirelessly to frame the storyline as Orange-Man-Bad-Locked-Kids-in-Cages. The basic media claim was that xenophobic Trump created an inhumane new immigration policy to incarcerate defenseless little migrant children in horrible cages like animals where they were starved and mistreated. The narrative used real photos of migrant children and teens in chain-link enclosures, including a heartbreaking shot of two children sleeping on the floor, without blankets, in what looked like a dog pen.

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau posted the photo on Twitter in 2018 with the indignant claim, “This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible.” aoc rushed to a chain-link fence to pose by a parking lot in feigned grief and outrage.

The problem, noted Business Insider, was that the photos were taken inside shelters in 2014 — during the Obama Regime. These were Obama’s caged kids.

The media never explained that the entire unaccompanied-minors [uac] debacle is rooted in the Flores legal settlement negotiated under Bill Clinton in 1997. Children cannot be detained for more than 20 days, while adults can be held longer as they wait for asylum or deportation. This creates an impossible loophole. Thus, when the Trump Administration detained adults at the border, the children were sent to hhs shelters, as was required under Flores. The drive-bys knew this was routine procedure, but the entire left exploited the opportunity to pretend that Trump was doing something shocking.

Over the decades, there had developed multiple abuses of the system, as described by The Federalist:

Flores … created a powerful incentive for families to cross the border illegally and make questionable asylum claims … [and] fueled a lucrative and exploitative human smuggling industry … [C]hildren were used as “passports” … by unscrupulous smugglers and cartels that profit handsomely from illegal immigration. U.S. officials discovered thousands of “fake families” at the border in recent years, with adults posing as parents of unrelated children, and even cases where children were “recycled,” crossing the border multiple times with unrelated adults.

The political establishment is perfectly content with this chaotic, dangerous, and immoral system. But this is not about Democrats supposedly caring about kids. No, this is a political issue, and it has roots in the Democrat Party playbook. The Democrats have an operating play: “Republicans hate x.” Fill in the blank: Republicans hate women; Republicans hate minorities; Republicans hate lgbtq people; Republicans hate and want to starve kids. Democrats, of course, love and protect everybody.

That’s what’s playing out. This is the political battle, and the mechanism in this particular operation is migrant kids. Democrats don’t care about them today any more than they did during the Obama Administration, when Central American unaccompanied minors poured over the border.

Exhibit A, The Washington Post, 1/28/16. Over four years ago, before Trump was elected. Trump had nothing to do with this: “Obama Administration Placed Children with Human Traffickers, Report Says.” This story is devastating:

The Obama Administration failed to protect thousands of Central American children who have flooded across the border since 2011, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers and to abuses at the hands of government approved caretakers, a Senate investigation has found… Senator Rob Portman initiated a six-month investigation after several Guatemalan teenagers were found in a dilapidated trailer park near Marion, Ohio, where they were being held captive by traffickers and forced to work at a local egg farm. The boys were among more than 125,000 unaccompanied minors who have surged into the U.S. since 2011, fleeing violence and unrest in Guatemala, the Honduras, and El Salvador. “It is intolerable that human trafficking — modern-day slavery — could occur in our own backyard,” Portman said… “What makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers.”

Where were the howls of concern, ladies and gentlemen? The Senate investigated, found the Obama Administration tried to hide it and pretend it wasn’t happening. The media barely reported it, because they were not about to expose Obama on anything.

Where was the compassion for the children? Where were all the catcalls that Obama was separating immigrant families? Where was all the fury that you saw and heard under Trump? Nowhere. It wasn’t an issue. The truth is, human trafficking is an example of the old saying: follow the money. According to a Border Patrol source who spoke to The [UK] Daily Mail, “The cartels are making more from people-trafficking than the entire annual budget of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” And money is flowing to politicians everywhere.

Which is why so many balked when the Trump Administration rolled out a “zero tolerance” policy. Trump stopped catch-and-release, built the wall, and instituted the remain-in-Mexico policy, all of which greatly reduced illegal immigration.

Trump’s achievements shook the foundations of the Deep State, and Biden ran against every aspect of Trump’s border policy. During the third Democratic Presidential debate, according to Real Clear Politics, Biden promised that as President he would “immediately surge to the border. All those people who are seeking asylum, they deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation who says, if you want to flee, and you’re freeing oppression, you should come.” Biden was as good as his word, and his message was heard by the world, which is on its way here. Biden basically erased Trump’s immigration stability within weeks.

At least 13,000 unaccompanied minors are expected to cross the border from Mexico in May 2021, and Biden’s dhs predicts 117,000 total in 2021, as reported by The New York Post. Caravans are forming in Central America. Biden’s numbers will far exceed the height of the crisis under Trump, according to Axios, which led to the “kids in cages” narrative. Which is why the Administration is reopening detention centers that had been closed by leftists, as well as planning for new Biden detention centers. It has gotten so bad that on 3/15/21 cbs reported that “U.S. Plans to House 3,000 Immigrant Children at Dallas Convention Center.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said they needed to reopen the holding facilities and build new ones “because of covid.” Really? Strange, the Biden Administration doesn’t seem too concerned about the spread of the coronavirus. According to The New York Post, the Border Control in Texas, per orders from the Biden Administration, gives the rapid test to migrants — and releases them all into America, including those who test positive for covid.

So we’ve gone from catch-and-release to catch-release-and-infect Americans — while kids are in cages for days, unable to shower or see daylight, according to cnn. In the Biden Administration, this passes for progress.

Americans do not approve. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 55 percent of Americans think U.S. officials are not doing enough to stop illegal immigration, up from 40 percent on Election Day.

The real joke here is that the Democrats pat themselves on the back as the supposed party of compassion, but there is zero compassion in what they are allowing to happen at the border. Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) spells it out in chilling detail, as reported by Townhall:

[T]rafficking networks are taking advantage of poor, desperate people, and they’re telling them, there’s a new President. This new President will let you come into the United States and stay there if you show up with a child. So now, you’ve created an incentive for children to be sent on that journey. We have no idea how many of these children are killed on that journey, left behind, die from illness on that journey, are sexually abused on that journey by these evil trafficking networks. All incentivized by a policy. What we wind up with is complete, utter ridiculousness. Today, it is easier in many ways to show up at the border in the United States and gain entry in this country than it is for an American to come to the Capitol and see their members of Congress.

Bingo.

“La frontera no esta cerrada,” announced Roberta Jacobson, Biden’s National Security Council coordinator for the southern border, reported mrc on 3/10/21. Translation: “The border is not closed.” It was supposedly a gaffe, which she corrected, but the Democrats’ Spanish messaging is often diametrically opposed to what they say in English. And this Spanish statement comes as no surprise, since every Biden policy supports open borders.

And the Republicans better get in the game on this, because here’s what the effort is really about. Create migrant/refugee camps: check. Bring in extended families: check. Use liberal “charity” networks to distribute these minors throughout America, with no oversight, investigative interest, or media curiosity as to what happens to these kids. The ultimate goal: grant blanket amnesty to every illegal immigrant, so they can vote Democrat in perpetuity.

Cartoon ©2021 by permission of Gary Varvel and Creators Syndicate, Inc.