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2014
June 28, 2014, REP. NANCY PELOSI: Comments after touring a Brownsville, TX Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) detention facility, which was housing what her website described as an “influx of unaccompanied children into the United States”, and witnessing the following scenes, of children huddled together in cages (video here):
- “While some may have tried to politicize it… why don’t we just put all that aside and talk about what we’re going to do to help these children and families?”
- “We’re here to thank the Border Patrol. We think they’re doing the best they can under the circumstances.”
- “It’s not a crisis, it’s an opportunity”
Responding to a question regarding the politicization of the issue of illegal aliens:
“Well, I hope that while some may have tried to politicize it, I hope that was not the case… I’m not going to take any bait on what one partisan said or the other. Why don’t we just put all that aside and talk about what we’re going to do to help these children and families?”
Excerpts from her statement:
“What we just saw was so stunning. If you believe, as we do, that every child, every person, has a spark of divinity in them and is therefore worthy of respect, what we saw in those rooms was dazzling – a sparkling array of God’s children, worthy of respect. So we have to use, as was said this morning, the crisis that some view as a crisis – and it does have crisis qualities – as an opportunity to show who we are as Americans: that we do respect people for their dignity and their worth; that we know how to get the job done, that relates to, again stopping trafficking. Because that’s one of the fundamentals that will reinforce the law.
“We have the law that established the Department of Homeland Security. We have the Flores decision. So the balance that we’re trying to create is to move these kids, these young people, these families as quickly as possible into another setting. We have to do it in a way that meets certain standards – and not, in our rush, not do the best we can for them. […]
“We’re here to thank the Border Patrol. We think they’re doing the best they can under the circumstances. They have handled this well, but the facilities just do not meet the need. And we have to be helpful. We thank the Department of Defense for what they’re doing, the Department of [Homeland Security].
Here are pictures from the scene that Rep. Pelosi and other members of Congress witnessed, to which her comments were in response:
Note: Contrast Pelosi’s statements in regards to witnessing these scenes, to her vitriolic denunciations of President Trump, on June 18, 2018, in which she told him to “stop this inhumane, barbaric policy, rescind your actions and take responsibility for it instead of blaming it on other people.”
h/t “Nancy Pelosi in 2014: Let’s not politicize all of these children in detention facilities,” by John Sexton, HotAir, June 21, 2018.
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2018
June 18, 2018, REP. NANCY PELOSI: Comments after touring the South West Keys Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) detention facility in San Diego, CA, which houses illegal alien adults and children (both accompanied and unaccompanied). After claiming four years earlier that the issue of illegal alien children should not be politicized,
Our message to Mr. Trump is, stop this inhumane, barbaric policy, rescind your actions and take responsibility for it instead of blaming it on other people…
Well, if you want to psychoanalyze the President, there aren’t enough hours in the day for that.
But, I will say that the more the public speaks up about this because as we said, this isn’t about immigration. This is about humanity. It’s about family. It’s about who we are as a country.
There were protests outside the facility during Pelosi’s visit, claiming that President Trump’s enforcement of immigration laws are “racist,” that he is the “racist-in-chief,” and that “no one is illegal.” Story and videos here.
June 20, 2018, PRESIDENT OBAMA: From a Facebook post: “Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms?”
Background: Under President Obama, tens of thousands of illegal alien children were “ripped from their parents’ arms,” in conditions so inhumane that the far-left ACLU and other groups filed a lawsuit against his administration in 2015, documenting hundreds of alleged incidents. The news media was effectively silent on that suit, however, as well as the physical evidence upon which the suit was based.
Excerpts from this post:
If you’ve been fortunate enough to have been born in America, imagine for a moment if circumstance had placed you somewhere else. Imagine if you’d been born in a country where you grew up fearing for your life, and eventually the lives of your children. A place where you finally found yourself so desperate to flee persecution, violence, and suffering that you’d be willing to travel thousands of miles under cover of darkness, enduring dangerous conditions, propelled forward by that very human impulse to create for our kids a better life.
That’s the reality for so many of the families whose plights we see and heart-rending cries we hear. And to watch those families broken apart in real time puts to us a very simple question: are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms, or are we a nation that values families, and works to keep them together? Do we look away, or do we choose to see something of ourselves and our children?
More at YahooNews-produced video.