What Conservative Pundits Are Saying About US-Mexico Border Detention Facilities

Detention Center — A detention center for captured undocumented immigrants stands near-empty at a U.S. Border Patrol station on March 13, 2017, in Rio Grande City, Texas. Getty

The conditions at border-detention facilities have been the subject of much debate on Capitol Hill. Following comments from Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, conservatives pundits are now pushing back against her allegations that the facilities are inhumane.

Ocasio-Cortez on Monday toured a holding facility in Texas, expressing disdain about the facilities, which she likened to concentration camps. She noted that detainees were drinking out of toilets when told by Customs and Border Patrol agents that there was no water.

Fox News pundit Brian Kilmeade pushed back against the comments on Tuesday’s edition of “Fox & Friends,” comparing the state of the facilities to a house party.

“Picture yourself, you have a house, family of five,” Kilmeade said during the show. “You have a party 30 people over. Maybe you have a big party and 100 people over and you have two and a half baths. Okay with 30. After 100 may be a little bit taxed, get an outdoor facility. Can you picture 5,000?”

Twitter had plenty to say after Kilmeade’s comments, with many, including Ocasio-Cortez, criticizing Kilmeade for his comments while some came to his defense.

Hey, @kilmeade:

What was the last “party” you went to where you:
- Were locked in a cage under armed guard
- Drank out of a toilet
- & given food of such poor nutritional value, for so long, that it gave you mouth sores? https://t.co/UfO8EQzRbI
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 2, 2019

You’re really missing the point here. These ppl are flowing over the border by the hundreds of thousands. How are we supposed to provide for that many people, They are choosing to come here and if it really that bad they can choose to go home.
— General Nobody (@GlassHouses73) July 2, 2019

Right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh also spoke on Cortez’s original comments during a Tuesday broadcast of “The Rush Limbaugh Show.” He insists that the toilet water in the facilities are a “step up” from many migrants “based on what the left is telling us their homelands are like.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham said in June 2018 that the children at the facilities are "temporarily housed in what are essentially summer camps."

Immigration