Opinion

WaPo During Trump: ‘Kids In Cages’; WaPo During Biden: ‘Migrant Facility For Children’

"Big difference 20 months and a new President makes, @washingtonpost," critic says.

   DailyWire.com
MATAMOROS, MEXICO - FEBRUARY 14: Fences and barbed wires are seen around the make-shift camp for asylum seekers on February 14, 2021 in Matamoros, Mexico. The Biden administration will resume the asylum seeking process for migrants as soon as on Friday Feb. 19. About 300 people a day will be processed into the U.S. according to the senior White House officials. (Photo by
Go Nakamura/Getty Images

The once-great Washington Post is now just another outlet of Newspeak.

In an Orwellian twist, the Jeff Bezos-owned paper has morphed “kids in cages” into “migrant facility for children.”

Throughout former President Donald Trump’s four years in the White House, the mainstream media, like the Post, repeatedly cited “kids in cages,” claiming foreigners entering the U.S. illegally had their children ruthlessly snatched from them and shoved into cages (it was actually former President Barack Obama who started the practice).

But all that’s changed now. “First migrant facility for children opens under Biden,” said the Post headline on Monday. But in another twist, the facility was actually opened by the Trump administration.

“Dozens of migrant teens boarded vans Monday for the trip down a dusty road to a former man camp for oil field workers here, the first migrant child facility opened under the Biden administration,” said the story. “The emergency facility — a vestige of the Trump administration that was open for only a month in summer 2019 — is being reactivated to hold up to 700 children ages 13 to 17.”

Out with “kids in cages,” in with “migrant facility for children.”

Forget the Post’s 2018 headlines, “The American tradition of caging children,” and “The real reason we’re locking children in cages.” And don’t even think about the 2019 piece headline, “Viewing US border cells derided as ‘cages,’ Central American officials pledge more immigration cooperation.”

In 2020, the Post’s editorial board wrote, “The tableaux of caged migrant children, torn from their parents’ arms, should be among the most enduring images produced by the president’s policies” in a piece warning about what Trump’s immigration agenda in a second term would look like.

And the Post goes on: “Government officials say the camp is needed because facilities for migrant children have had to cut capacity by nearly half because of the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border has been inching up, with January reporting the highest total — more than 5,700 apprehensions — for that month in recent years.”

So wait, they’re “unaccompanied” — which means they’re not snatched from their parents?

The new coinage didn’t get past eagle-eyed readers. “Kids in cages is now ‘migrant facility for children,'” radio host Dana Loesch declared.

“Big difference 20 months and a new President makes, @washingtonpost,” commentary writer Drew Holden wrote.

“A what for what now?” National Review contributing editor Daniel Foster wrote.

Later in the piece, the Post piece cited several critics unhappy with Biden’s move. “It’s unnecessary, it’s costly, and it goes absolutely against everything Biden promised he was going to do,” said Linda Brandmiller, a San Antonio-based immigration lawyer who represents unaccompanied minors. “It’s a step backward, is what it is. It’s a huge step backward.”

Progressives, too, were unhappy. “Definitely what we all voted for,” wrote Jordan Zakarin, who says in his Twitter profile, “I run Progressives Everywhere.”

In 2019, the man who was the Obama administration’s chief of removing illegal immigrants said it was Obama who had the idea of putting illegal immigrant children in the “cages.”

Thomas Homan, Obama’s executive associate director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement between May 2013 and January 2017, said, “I’ve been to that facility, where they talk about cages. That facility was built under President Obama under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson. I was there because I was there when it was built,” according to the Washington Examiner.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  WaPo During Trump: ‘Kids In Cages’; WaPo During Biden: ‘Migrant Facility For Children’