McALLEN, TEXAS — It's an overcast day in the Rio Grande Valley as National Border Patrol Council Vice President Chris Cabrera pulls his SUV into an empty parking lot across from an otherwise nondescript sheet-metal building. We jump out of his vehicle to get a better look, but the view from across the street is as close as I'll get to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Central Processing Center for illegal immigrants in the Rio Grande Valley — thanks to a decision from the Biden administration agency to bar reporters, including from Townhall and other network affiliates, from observing what goes on inside.
The unassuming building nestled amongst industrial buildings on Ursula Avenue has been a powder keg for those who believe securing the border is xenophobic and incentivizing mass illegal migration to the benefit of violent cartels in Mexico is "humane."
Remember "kids in cages," the outrage machine's narrative created to attack former President Donald Trump as he worked to enforce border policies, secure the international boundary, and dissuade would-be illegal immigrants from making the dangerous journey in the first place? This is where it all started. It's where Alyssa Milano held a press conference condemning the Trump administration's border policy even though it was President Obama who turned the building into a chain link fence-divided holding and processing facility. But there was no outrage, no press conferences, and no tears from Democrats then.
Part of the bipartisan congressional delegation's trip I embedded with — led by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul — to see the effects of Biden's border policies up close was a tour of the processing facility. But only members of Congress and their staff were allowed inside. Even then, as I was told by congressional aides, official staff were limited in what they were allowed to document while touring the facility.
The decision not to allow reporters covering the delegation's trip — including Townhall — came from CBP. They told delegation organizers that the media was unable to join the members for the tour or enter the facility.
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"I don't think it's the Border Patrol's call, I think it's higher up on the DHS or possibly the administration — they don't want reporters in there," Cabrera explains as we stand across the street from faux grass-covered fences around the facility designed to obscure views. All that can be seen is the occasional Border Patrol vehicle entering or exiting, and the top portion of a bus bay where illegal immigrants are loaded and unloaded at the processing center.
The 55,000-square-foot facility is where illegal immigrant family units or unaccompanied children are housed. As Cabrera notes, the large facility "has been well over capacity."
"I think having the transparency, people seeing what's going on, I think it would cut out a lot of rumors," Cabrera explains while discussing the Biden administration's decision not to allow reporters inside. "I think if people saw what was going on and see how [illegal immigrants are] being treated and seeing the way our agents interact with these people, I think it would cut out a lot of the nonsense that we hear on the news... Not necessarily from you," he adds.
As another result of open-border policies, Border Patrol has had to change its processing facilities into detention facilities. Explaining that Border Patrol has "always been a short-term holding" agency and was "never used to holding anybody longer than 24-48 hours," Cabrera says that when the surge in illegal immigrants "started steamrolling us, we had to create a facility like this one." It has "shower points, there are places to get your clothes washed, medical facilities in there, [and] a place where they can get food."
Cabrera admits that "nobody wants to be in a jail" but rightly reminds "we have to hold these folks somewhere." The kids' area of the facility, he says, has "pretty wide open spaces" plus "TVs, recreation areas, [and] beds for them. If you have to be in a detention area, this is not a bad place," Cabrera notes.
Despite these conditions, Cabrera says that during the Trump administration, "you had the congresspeople crying, saying that [border agents] were making people drink out of toilets and all that. I mean that just doesn't happen. People don't get abused in these places," he emphasizes. "Our agents take their job very seriously."
"But you always have somebody, whether it's Alyssa Milano or somebody coming in and saying how bad it is and it's a 'concentration camp' and all this nonsense," recalls Cabrera. "It's not like that. If people were allowed to see it, they would know that they're being fed a line of nonsense."
After a few days at the McAllen CPC, Border Patrol transfers illegal immigrants to the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Refugee Resettlement Office (RRO). "Sometimes," Cabrera adds, illegal immigrants are sent from the CPC to "other states" or "released to the custody of a parent or a chaperone who will take them to whichever part of the country that their family's from."
