After a seven-year old migrant girl died of dehydration after more than eight hours in Border Patrol custody, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen couldn’t have sounded less concerned about any Border Patrol negligence: “This family chose to cross illegally,” she said.
Nielsen visited Fox & Friends this morning to promote Donald Trump’s obsessive focus on immigrants. She and Trump’s Fox Friends acted as both cheerleaders of enforcement measures and fear mongers about what might be about to come over the border at any moment.
Cohost Brian Kilmeade noted that Nielsen had “submitted” to Fox “pretty staggering” statistics. The Fox & Friends producers had helpfully prepared in advance large graphics that filled the screen with those statistics. All were presented without question by any of the cohosts.
“Every day the Department of Homeland Security prevents ten known or suspected terrorists from traveling to our country,” Nielsen dubiously claimed, without receiving any follow-up questions. Of course, there was no mention of the undocumented workers employed at Donald Trump’s New Jersey golf club nor those working for the family of Trump buddy and current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes.
After almost two and a half minutes of turning a DHS press release into “news,” the Trump Friends got around to asking about the death of the migrant girl. Here’s what we know already, via The Washington Post:
According to CBP records, the girl and her father were taken into custody about 10 p.m. Dec. 6 south of Lordsburg, N.M., as part of a group of 163 people who approached U.S. agents to turn themselves in.
More than eight hours later, the child began having seizures at 6:25 a.m., CBP records show. Emergency responders, who arrived soon after, measured her body temperature at 105.7 degrees, and according to a statement from CBP, she “reportedly had not eaten or consumed water for several days.”
According to NPR, “U.S. officials say they are holding almost 15,000 immigrant children in nearly full detention facilities. At the same time, border agents are apprehending more families with children than ever.”
Instead of asking Nielsen whether the girl asked for any food or water or how border agents didn’t notice her physical distress, cohost and Best Friend To Jesus Ainsley Earhardt tossed an easily-dodged softball to Nielsen: “What do you know about this little girl, this seven-year-old migrant girl that was taken into Border Patrol custody and then died of dehydration and exhaustion?”
“Yeah, it’s heart-wrenching is what it is,” Nielsen said, without a trace of emotion, “and my heart goes out to the family—all of DHS.”
However, Nielsen quickly recovered from her ostensible sorrow and immediately blamed the girl’s death on her family.
NIELSEN: You know, this is just a very sad example of the dangers of this journey. This family chose to cross illegally. What happened here was, they were 90 - about 90 miles away from where we could process them. They came in such a large crowd that it took our Border Patrol folks a couple times to get them all. We gave immediate care. We’ll continue to look into the situation. But, again, I cannot stress how dangerous this journey is when migrants choose to come here illegally.
Again, the girl reportedly died after eight hours in Border Patrol custody. But Kilmeade quickly suggested Nielsen’s agents had acted heroically. “I understand she had a 105 fever and you guys got her over to a hospital in El Paso, were unable to save her life,” Kilmeade conveniently said.
Then they all moved on to demonizing and fear mongering about the caravan, advocating for the wall and a #TrumpShutdown of the federal government if Congress doesn’t fund that unpopular project that Mexico was supposed to pay for.
The Trump administration may not have actually pre-scripted an interview this time but they might as well have.
See how all the hosts’ commentary could have come straight out of a Trump White House press release below, from the December 14, 2018 Fox & Friends.
The whole point is to make border crossings so unpleasant, so onerous and frankly so dangerous, that the word will get back to anyone else wanting to come north. It’s the same thinking that led to the current and vicious family separation policy. It’s the same thinking that led AM Radio to champion the cause of Ramos & Compean ten years ago for shooting a man in the back.
And the best part for people like the Pence White House and their angry Right Wing supporters is that they will then blame the victims for their suffering. It’s the same logic that works when they laugh at the people who are losing their ACA coverage and tell them “why don’t you get a job, libtard?” without knowing what is actually happening with them. It’s just fun for them to have extra bullying opportunities.
As I see it, the one plus here is that these angry Right Wingers will not be able to walk all their bigotry back when they lose the White House and Senate and suddenly want to let bygones be bygones. They’ve taken their masks off and let their inner hater flags fly. Now they can live with the consequences for the rest of their lives. There’s been a lot of hateful viciousness over the past three years that doesn’t get forgiven or forgotten, unfortunately. And nobody forced these people to act in a hateful manner. So they’ll reap what they’ve sown.