Conservatives have found a new line of attack on the ongoing refugee crisis along the southern border: The children who are migrating en masse from Central America and crowding into detention centers are not children.
“I realize that in Barack Obama’s America we now classify anyone under the age of 26 as a child eligible for their parent’s healthcare insurance,” writes Red State‘s Erick Erickson. “But I’m pretty sure a normal person would not classify these men as children.” He links to this tweet:
Yep, those sure all look like children. pic.twitter.com/xXEnP9q2XN
— Cody Full (@CodyFNfootball) July 8, 2014
Erickson’s analysis is correct—the people in this photo are not children. The way immigration detention works is that children are separated from adults and then sorted by age and gender. This is noted in nearly every single story on the subject. Just because more than 48,000 minors have been detained crossing the border in 2014 doesn’t mean adults have simply stopped coming over.
Lest you think that the administration is inventing this influx of young migrants, here is a photo of migrant children crowded into a single room. I found it on Breitbart:
You could also read my colleague Ian Gordon’s wrenching story for the magazine on 17-year-old Adrián’s flight from Guatemala City to the United States.
