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.@jacobsoboroff : Love your work, and am especially grateful for your reporting at the border. Here's a thread with more context on this particular set of points:
The deportations that you mention in the Obama years were 85% people who had arrived recently - this means single adults who had recently crossed the border and hadn't yet set down roots....
...of the remainder, 90% had been convicted of serious crimes. Here’s more on that topic: dhs.gov/sites/default/…
Obama's enforcement priorities may have taken time to develop, but they ultimately provided a humane set of guidelines that DHS personnel actually followed. Before Obama (and after) there were no rules or priorities for enforcement. We are seeing what that looks like now.
On conditions for kids: We were the first to say that kids don't belong in border patrol lockups. In 2014 when the number of unaccompanied migrants spiked unexpectedly, we opened facilities like the one in Texas to contend with the emergency...
but also engaged FEMA to coordinate an effort by the entire federal government to get those kids into proper shelter care, and to reunite them with their families. More on that here: obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-offi…
We addressed the situation and we never ran out of shelter space again. Some officials inside the agencies proposed the same policy that resulted in taking kids from their parents. We said no.
Border crises like these are incredibly difficult to manage-there is a difference between an admin that believes in admitting refugees, strengthens the asylum process, implements DACA, and one that simply doesn't care. Seems like important context before comparing the two.
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