Misleading: The U.S. government is keeping migrant children in cages at the U.S.-Mexico border.

By: Khagesh KG
June 29 2021

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The Biden administration is not holding migrant children behind chain-link fences, though the conditions of detention centers have been criticized. In 2018, Democrats criticized the Trump administration for placing migrant children in facilities resembling cages. Since President Joe Biden took office, the former president's supporters have accused Democrats of hypocrisy, as several reports arose of Biden introducing similar policies and images of jail-like centers. However, many of the accusations against Biden on social media are misleading. Several posts show old images of metal fencing surrounding facility centers that are no longer in operation. During the Trump administration in 2018, journalists and Democrat politicians visited a detention facility in Texas. They found that the officials separated hundreds of migrant children from their parents and held them in cells. The Associated Press reported on the issue and revealed that the facility had "a series of cages." Each cage housed 20 children. While campaigning in October 2019, Biden pledged to undo Trump's policies and help migrant families reunite. However, progress has been slow, with legislative hurdles making it difficult to provide adequate shelter and facilities at the pace needed. Biden has reopened the Carrizo Spring to shelter up to 700 unaccompanied children and young people who had been left at the border. The move provoked controversy, as Carrizo Springs had been closed a month after its opening in 2019 due to uninhabitable conditions. Under Trump’s administration, roughly 2,500 children unaccompanied minors were separated from their parents and left in facilities with cramped, often unsanitary conditions. These occasionally had wire, metal fences resembling prisons. According to the BBC, since March 2021, there has been a massive drop in children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border, saying: "The number of children being held in by US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) has dropped 88% between late March and late April." Trump’s separation policy is no longer in effect under Biden's governance. The present facilities do not have chain-link fences at Border Patrol to separate the kids from their parents, though their conditions have been criticized. Reuters notes that tensions still preside on the issue of unaccompanied migrants, with many young people and children kept in overcrowded shelters, but it has been noted that there is little detail on the conditions of the emergency shelters. CORRECTION: We have changed this from "false" to "misleading."