After a delay of today's White House press briefing that lasted over four hours, CNN's Oliver Darcy reports that the delay was because White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders “didn’t want to do the briefing today amid questions on child separation policy”, obliging the White House to fly Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in to answer questions instead.
The delay came on a day when the White House was facing widespread fury over its policy of child separation at the southern border, including condemnation of the policy by all five of the nation's living First Ladies. As they awaited Sanders' appearance, reporters could be heard listening to newly released audio of some of the crying children in the White House briefing room.
After reading a terse statement, Sanders introduced Nielsen to respond to questions about the child separation policy, saying only that she would return to answer questions on "other" matters. Nielsen, for her part, gave a very long speech in which she repeatedly, and intentionally, misrepresented both the known and the policy and the laws involved.
Defending the policy, Nielsen asserted that "loopholes" preventing the separating and deporting of families have created a "functionally open border" and demanded that Congress pass an assortment of White House-desired bills allowing speedier deportation of asylum-seeking families. On the separation of children from their parents, she complained that "as a matter of law" it is "not possible" to deport full "family units."
Nielsen also gave full support to the "zero tolerance" policy that she considers to either not exist or to be an absolute obligation on her part, asserting that those that cross the border without proper paperwork–a misdemeanor–"are by definition criminals"–the argument used by the administration to then separate their children from them, placing the children in separate detention camps. This, too, is not true: Asylum-seekers have been widely allowed to present themselves to authorities anywhere along the border in order to be processed. It was a decision of the (racist) Trump administration to instead criminalize the act.
She also flatly claimed that it was "not true" that children are being separated as a result of the new "zero tolerance" policy. This was a lie, and a stupid, asinine one, and she is a garbage human being for saying it. She also lied in stating that those asylum seekers that presented themselves at border crossings were not having their children taken from them: Reporters have confirmed this is not true. Again, she was lying.
During Neilson’s performance, the audio of crying children in government detention was again picked up by microphones in the White House briefing room, though it is unknown where in the room it was playing or who was responsible for it. Neither she nor Sanders appeared to acknowledge that audio.