Last weekend former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson reminded an audience in Aspen that President Trump didn't invent "cages" being used to shelter families and children in border detention facilities.
“Chain link barriers, partitions, fences, cages, whatever you want to call them, were not invented on January 20, 2017, okay?" Johnson said during an interview at the Aspen Institute.
In other words, the current crisis at the border started during the Obama administration.
Despite overwhelming numbers of illegal aliens pouring into the country from Central America, 2020 Democrats are arguing the act of crossing the border should be decriminalized.
Johnson was asked about this position during an interview with the Washington Post:
On Tuesday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said he would “virtually eliminate immigration detention” by executive order. During last week’s debate, presidential candidate Julián Castro proposed decriminalizing illegal border crossings — a position other Democrats in the race rapidly adopted.
Others in the party are urging caution, saying the push toward decriminalization risks playing into Trump’s hands.
“That is tantamount to declaring publicly that we have open borders,” said Jeh Johnson, who ran the Department of Homeland Security during President Barack Obama’s second term. “That is unworkable, unwise and does not have the support of a majority of American people or the Congress, and if we had such a policy, instead of 100,000 apprehensions a month, it will be multiples of that.”
Democrats claim calling them the Party of "open borders" is simply a Republican talking point. Not anymore.