Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem clashed with NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker in a testy exchange on Sunday over alleged “inhumane” conditions at the newly-opened Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention facility in the Florida everglades.
The detention facility, which currently holds 900 people but has the capacity to hold nearly 4,000, has been under scrutiny after Democratic lawmakers toured the facility on Saturday. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., described the facility as an “internment camp.” Democratic lawmakers who toured the facility claimed that detainees were subjected to inhumane treatment, unsanitary conditions and sweltering heat. Wasserman Schultz claimed that detainees were forced to drink water from the same sink they use for the bathroom, and were packed into “wall-to-wall cages.”
“Our detention centers at the federal level are held to a higher standard than most local or state centers and even federal prisons. The standards are extremely high, now this is a state-run facility at Alligator Alcatraz —” Noem told Welker in response to being questioned over whether the Florida facility was inhumane, before being interrupted by the host.
“More than 30 people stuffed into a jail cell?” Welker asked, cutting off Noem.
“I wish they would have said that back during the Biden administration and back when the Democrats were in the White House when they were piling people on top of each other on cement floors and they didn’t have two feet to move. They never did that, and that’s why this politics has to end,” Noem said.
“I wouldn’t call them jail cells, I would call them a facility where they are held and that are secure facilities, but are held to the highest levels of what the federal government requires for detention facilities –” Noem said before once again being cut off by Welker.
“Democrats have called them cages,” the “Meet the Press” host interrupted.
Noem vowed to allow cameras to document the conditions inside migrant detention centers to show how their conditions are superior to centers used in the Biden administration. She also encouraged illegal immigrants to self-deport to avoid the detention process entirely and give themselves an opportunity to return to the country legally.
Trump administration Border Czar Tom Homan also took Democrats to task Sunday for overlooking migrant detention conditions under Biden and failing to criticize them until Trump took office on CNN’s State of the Union.
“”You didn’t see them complaining about, under Biden administration, people being held in a border patrol parking lot surrounded by a fence and sweltering heat, they ignored four years of open borders, historic migrant deaths, historic Americans dying from fentanyl, historic numbers of women and children being sex trafficked.”
The Trump administration’s deportation policies have been the subject of widespread controversy and multiple court injunctions. The White House has aggressively moved to secure the southern border and has been deporting illegal immigrants at a rapid pace.
