The Homestead detention center is reportedly the biggest shelter for migrant children in the country. And it just happens to be only 30 miles away from the first Democratic primary debate Wednesday night in Miami. The location gave Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) time to visit the facility before the presidential contest. What she found was "prison"- like conditions.
Warren's request to enter the center was denied, so she instead stood on a ladder and peered over the gate. She later told the press what she saw.
Here’s Elizabeth Warren on what she saw from outside Homestead today — she requested a visit but was not allowed in. pic.twitter.com/rZSa8C4skH
— maxwell (@maxwellstrachan) June 26, 2019
"There weren’t children playing," she reported. "There weren’t children laughing the way children usually do when they’re moving from one place to another. These were children who were being marched like little soldiers - like little prisoners - from one place to another. This is not what we should be doing as a country.”
Actress Alyssa Milano wasn't far behind Warren. She too tried to enter the Homestead premises but was turned away, handed a card and instructed to email DHS with a media request. They'd get back to her in two weeks.
Milano mused that those two weeks will "of course" be used by the facilitators to "clean up the place." She then shared a little of what she had seen or learned of what the conditions inside were like, including how authorities were taking away pens and pencils from children because they were cutting themselves.
#Homestead https://t.co/rdaC5A0izb
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) June 26, 2019
The only thing to do, she concluded, was to "shut down" these detention centers.
Her heart may be in the right place, but I hope Milano read the entire Newsweek article she shared on her Twitter page. As the editors mention, the Homestead detention center was opened "during former President Barack Obama's administration, closed and then reopened in March 2018."
Again, opened during former President Barack Obama's administration.
Huh. So she may be picking a battle with the wrong White House.
No doubt the use of detention centers will be a hot issue at tonight's debate. Follow along with us on the Townhall LIVE Blog starting at 8:30 p.m.