On Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler floated the idea of “child abuse” charges against high-ranking officials at U.S. border and immigration agencies.
“This is inhuman. Frankly, I think it’s criminal,” Nadler told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in an interview about the humanitarian crisis along the southern border.
“There ought to be criminal prosecutions of some of the agency heads and some of the people for child abuse. This is clearly child abuse. It violates probably a half a dozen laws,” he said. The comments from Nadler came after 14 congressional Democrats, who recently visited the border, said that migrants were living in squalid conditions with limited water, according to the Daily Caller.
In addition, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a dramatic outburstwhile at a border facility in Texas, claiming without evidence that Customs and Border Protection agents told a female detainee to drink from a toilet.
She also reportedly screamed “in a threatening manner” at U.S. Border Patrol agents and refused to tour the facility.
However, most of AOC’s harrowing account of the facility’s conditions were refuted by Hispanic pastors who toured the border in the days following her visit — ultimately making the case for “child abuse” charges more difficult to sell to the public.
“I read the reports, saw the news clips. I just wanted to see what was actually happening in order to better enable our efforts to find a fair and a just solution to our broken immigration system,” the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez said about touring the border in the wake of AOC’s dramatic visit, according to Fox News.
“To my surprise, I saw something drastically different from the stories I’ve been hearing in our national discourse. Even as a veteran of immigration advocacy in the U.S., I was shocked at the misinformation of the crisis at the border,” he said.