Obama’s former Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, appeared on “Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace” to discuss the hot-button topic of child separations at the border.
In the most interesting part of the conversation, Johnson admitted that the Obama administration enforced practically the same policy. (RELATED: Trump’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Immigration Policy Isn’t New – Obama Did the Same Thing).
WALLACE: Let’s look — because you mentioned it — at how the Obama administration and you as secretary of Homeland Security handled this back in 2014 when there was also a spike in children, most of them unaccompanied, coming across the border. You started jailing entire families. In some cases, not a lot, but in some, you separated children from their parents in these pictures that we are putting up, from 2014, show pictures of unaccompanied minors in effect jail situations. As you look back on that, did you handle it so well?
JOHNSON: Well, Chris, without a doubt the images and the reality from 2014 just like 2018 are not pretty. And so, we expanded family detention. We had then 34,000 beds for family detention, only 95 of 34,000 equipped to deal with families. So, we extended it. I freely admit it was controversial. We believed it was necessary at the time. I still believe it is necessary to name (ph) a certain capability for families. We can’t have catch and release and in my three years we deported, or repatriated or returned over a million people.
And yet, how did the liberal media portray him? Did we hear rhetoric about families being torn apart?
Of course not. Heck, when the Washington Post published a profile on Johnson back in 2014 and discussed child apprehensions at the border, they portrayed Johnson as calm and understanding. “Beyond the politics, the urgency of the immigration question was made clear to Johnson during a Mother’s Day tour of a border-control station in McAllen, Tex. The station has been overwhelmed in recent months by tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America coming across the Mexican border.”
“Where’s your mother?” Johnson asked one young girl.
“I don’t have a mother,” she replied tearfully, according to Johnson. “I’m looking for my father in the United States.”
And how did the Post headline their piece, published at a time when immigration enforcement was facing a similar problem to today, and responding to it the same way? With the following:
How do you think the headline would be phrased today?
If Jeh Johnson were President Trump’s DHS Secretary, the liberal media would be appalled at the separation of families at the border, but of course, because Johnson is a Democrat, no such outrage occurred.
