Current and past immigration officials have come out to reject a series of accusations made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), where she claims illegal immigrants are subjected to “inhumane” treatment and are told to “drink out of the toilets.”
“They are not drinking out of the toilet—no Border Patrol agent is going to make anyone drink out of the toilet,” Homan said during his appearance on July 2. “It’s just ridiculous on its face.”
He explained that the holding cells at the facilities have an apparatus that is comprised of a sink and toilet that uses two separate water lines.
“You’re drinking out of the same apparatus, the same piece of equipment, but there are two separate water lines—one going to the commode, one going to the sink,” Homan said.
“They are designed that way to try to save space and make it more comfortable for the people who are in those facilities,” he added.
A photo of the said apparatus in another facility was posted on social media by Mail Online’s political editor David Martosko.
Ocasio-Cortez responded to Martosko’s post, confirming that it was indeed the same type of toilet sink but claimed that there was only one and it wasn’t functioning when she visited on July 1.
“Ocasio-Cortez is clearly, intentionally misinforming the American public,” Homan added.
“That’s not how these facilities are designed. That’s not what our people are trained to do. Those facilities are very well scripted in the sense of people get regulated coming in, coming out. How often they get fed. The temperature inside the cell. The cleaning, all of that stuff is regulated very highly by the men and women of CBP,” Vitiello told the program’s host.
“This is a problem. These facilities were built for the booking procedure. People are supposed to be in those facilities for a couple of hours so agents can get their fingerprints, identify who they are, place them under DACA (sic) control, and in the case of families, eventually released,” Vitiello said.
“But they’re being overwhelmed. There are tens of thousands of people coming to the border all week long and there’s only so much floor space. There’s only so much computer time that agents have to get people through the process,” he added.
In a separate statement, a Department of Homeland Security official also highlighted the problem of the backlog caused by the surge of people arriving.
“Nobody is forced to drink out of a toilet and nobody is told to drink out of a toilet,” he continued. “Its completely and totally a baseless and ridiculous allegation and frankly it needs to be investigated and she needs to be exposed.”
In a series of posts, Ocasio-Cortez made various claims about what she had seen and heard from people inside the facility.
“Officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets,” she wrote. “This was them on their GOOD behavior in front of members of Congress.”
Along with the drinking water claim, Ocasio-Cortez claimed a detainee told them that border patrol agents were engaging in “psychological warfare” with them.
“[O]ne of them described their treatment at the hands of officers as “psychological warfare”—waking them at odd hours for no reason, calling them [expletive], etc,” the congresswoman wrote. “Tell me what about that is due to a ‘lack of funding?'”
The congresswoman was also accused of unruly behavior during the visit at the El Paso facilities on July 1. Two witnesses told Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli that Ocasio-Cortez had allegedly yelled at border agents “in a threatening manner.”
“She comes out screaming at our agents, right at the beginning [of the tour] … Crying and screaming and yelling,” said one witness said, reported the news outlet.
“The agents, they wanted to respond, but they held back because she’s a congressional delegate. But when you have someone yelling at you in a threatening manner … They were like, ‘Hey, you need to kinda step back,’” the same witness said.
