Back in January, CBS News took Donald Trump to task for claiming that 1 out of 3 women is sexually assaulted while traveling north toward the nation’s southern border. In a since-deleted “fact check,” the network reported:
Between 60 percent and 80 percent of female migrants traveling through Mexico are raped along the way, Amnesty International estimates.
There’s a “gotcha” for the ages! CBS succeeds in proving the president wrong but only by affirming that the problem is at least twice as bad as he had intimated.
Yesterday, another liberal admitted that women making the treacherous journey north are in danger of sexual assault. But for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the source of the danger is not the men the illegals are traveling with. It’s ICE:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
If you’re mad that I think people SHOULD KNOW when Dems vote to expand ICE powers, then be mad.
ICE is a dangerous agency with 0 accountability, widespread reporting of rape, abuse of power, + children dying in DHS custody.
Having a D next to your name doesn’t make that right.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 2, 2019
It’s the second sentence of her tweet that merits the most attention. In it, Ocasio-Cortez once again confuses the job of ICE with that of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It is the latter agency that patrols the nation’s borders and apprehends those who cross into the country between ports of entry. ICE, meanwhile, is primarily tasked with enforcing immigration laws within the interior of the nation. Even the far-left Slate recognized this distinction, albeit in a way that is meant to denigrates both agencies:
Border Patrol agents are the ones who have been caught dumping out water left for migrants in the Arizona desert, and ICE agents are the ones conducting workplace raids around the country to arrest undocumented immigrants.
As for the claims of “widespread reporting of rape” and “children dying in DHS custody,” the first is totally fanciful, the second wildly exaggerated. When a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died after being detained by the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), AOC was all over the story despite its being an outlier. Even the father of the child said he had “no complaints about how Border Patrol agents treated him and his daughter.
In addition to the risks of sexual assault, robbery, and other external dangers that confront migrants traveling in caravans, another is the health risk associated with the heat, lack of sanitation, and lack of nourishment, especially hydration. Under the Obama administration 18 migrants died in CBP detention, but the Left was silent, seeming to grasp that the long and perilous journey takes its toll in some individuals.
