‘The Truth Will Set You Free’: Pastor Refutes Ocasio-Cortez Portrayal of Border Conditions
(Worthy News) – On Monday the President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, who toured the same Texas border facility maligned by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, disputed the freshman congresswoman’s characterization.
Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, who served as an immigration adviser for presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama before Trump, went to the El Paso Station with a team of 7 pastors shortly after a delegation of 14 Democrats joined by Ocasio-Cortez made the same trip.
“Even as a veteran of immigration advocacy in the U.S., I was shocked at the misinformation of the crisis at the border,” Rodriguez told Fox News.
Far from the communist-style detention camp depicted by the freshman congresswoman—which in her rendition involved Iron Curtain-era torture methods such as sleep deprivation and forced consumption of toilet water employed by agents against migrants—Rodriguez said the facility was not lacking in necessities or sanitation, with Pastor Tony Stewart, who joined the delegation, adding that many of the largely Hispanic border agents were in tears over the mischaracterization.
“Pastor Sam, what they’re saying about us is completely false. We care about these kids and have a passion for our calling,” the immigration officers reportedly told Rodriguez.
Reports surfaced about Ocasio-Cortez’s infamous trip to the facility this week, which, according to her, unearthed evidence of border agents forcing a migrant woman to drink out of a toilet.
Former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Tom Homan told Fox News the misimpression could have come from a joint sink-and-toilet unit present in many facilities, which nevertheless was designed to save space, not to humiliate detainees, and had separate water lines.
[T]hey are designed that way to try to save space and make it more comfortable for the people who are in those facilities,” he explained.
Rodriguez opined that, despite the scurrilous caricatures of Ocasio-Cortez, no one, right or left, was justified in allowing the immigration crisis to unfold the way it has.
“What’s heart-wrenching is that we have both Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress, who can’t come together for the purpose of doing the right thing and finding a solution to our immigration crisis,” he concluded, calling on both parties to humble themselves and “address the system they created.”