Journalists, Obama’s former speechwriter and other public figures all quietly deleted their misplaced horror at images of caged migrant children in the US when they found out the picture was taken under President Obama.
CNN journalist Hadas Gold, NYT Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein, Obama’s speechwriter Jon Favreau, Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour and former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa were all caught out by a seemingly new article that featured an image of two migrant children sleeping in a cage at an ICE detention facility.
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The group, along with several others too excited to tweet their dismay to check the article’s publication date, told their ‘followers’ to look at the “disturbing” images and the immigration policy that put them there. The only problem? It was under President Obama’s watch, not Trump’s.
“This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible," Favreau wrote in screenshots captured by Caleb Hull, senior editor of The IJR.
"Speechless. This is not who we are as a nation," wrote former Mayor Villaraigosa.
Favreau and the rest all quietly deleted the tweets when they learned of their blunder. Gold and Silverstein acknowledged their mistake, with the latter blaming his family and the former pretending she knew it to be old footage.
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“No amnesia here. Our immigration system is a disaster and was a disaster long before Trump came along,” wrote Sarsour in apparent response to the gaffe.
The photo was actually part of a story, published in 2014 by The Arizona Republic, about migrant children who enter the country illegally. The children, once apprehended by US Customs and Border Protection, were shipped to Nogales from overwhelmed processing facilities in Texas.
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