Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Mark Morgan said comparisons of federal immigration holding facilities to Nazi concentration camps are having a “demoralizing” effect on Border Patrol agents, as well as his agency’s employees, who are caring for tens of thousands of migrants in custody.
“It’s demoralizing them,” Morgan told Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham late Wednesday. “This kind of rhetoric — it’s irresponsible, reckless, and it’s flat-out wrong.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made pointed comments earlier this week about Border Patrol stations, which hold any individual who has illegally crossed into the country, even if seeking asylum.
“The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border,” the New York Democratic representative said. “‘Never again’ means something.”
Morgan, who was a senior Border Patrol official during the Obama administration, said that during the 2014 unaccompanied minor surge at the southern border, he witnessed agents bring items from their homes to the stations where children were held before being transferred to the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“I saw Border Patrol agents, they cared for these kids as if they were their own — bringing in soccer balls to play soccer with them,” he said.
In recent weeks, the resettlement office has been so overwhelmed with children being transferred from ICE and Customs and Border Protection custody that it has not been able to accept children as quickly as internal policy mandates.
Border Patrol union officials told the Washington Examiner getting children out of CBP custody is a priority over single adults, some of whom are held two to four weeks before being moved to HHS, according to the El Paso Border Patrol union.
Adults and families are in CBP custody longer than the 72-hour limit because ICE, the agency tasked with either releasing or deporting unauthorized immigrants, lacks bed space to take in more people.
Morgan said that although the stations are not concentration camps, the overcrowding and unpleasant conditions could be ended if lawmakers passed a $4.5 billion supplemental funding bill that would give HHS and the Department of Homeland Security the ability to enhance holding arrangements.
