Several former Obama administration officials took to social media and news outlets last month to explain a gallery of years-old photos that showed immigrant children sleeping in shoddy conditions at a government-run holding facility in Arizona.

 

The images, which the Associated Press first published in 2014, resurfaced recently for reasons that remain unclear, and quickly prompted viral outrage on Twitter. One particularly disturbing image showed two children sleeping on mattresses on the floor inside what appeared to be a cage.

A number of prominent liberals — and even a former Obama administration official — shared the photos, mistakenly believing they depicted the Trump administration's treatment of immigrant children who were forcibly separated from their parents.

Jon Favreau, who worked as a speechwriter for former President Barack Obama, tweeted, "This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible."

Favreau said he later deleted the tweet after social media users pointed out that the photos were taken during the Obama administration. But by that point, critics had already rushed to accuse him of concealing Obama's own harsh immigration tactics while condemning Trump's.

Favreau said in a series of tweets that he made a "mistake" by not checking the date of the photos before sharing them on Twitter. He explained that the photos were taken in 2014, when the Obama administration faced "an influx of unaccompanied minors who showed up at the border, fleeing violence from Central America."

He added that the pictures had been taken while the government was trying to "move those children out of those shelters as fast as humanly possible and connect them with their parents, most of whom were already in the United States."

In 2014 the Obama Administration wanted to make it easier to send kids back. So there is this, from Vox:

The Obama administration and Republicans in Congress have both embraced the idea of changing the law, to children who are coming over from Central America the same way as children coming from Mexico: they'd have to pass an immediate screening interview in order to stay in the country.

That's likely to greatly reduce the number of children who are able to stay. But the rushed process is ending up sending Mexican children back into danger. That should raise red flags for any proposals to deal with Central American children the same way.

Obama, Jeff Flake, McCain and others demanded that the laws be changed so kids could be deported immediately. Now McCain, Flake and others rip Trump incessantly and the compliant media acts like Trump is a tyrant dictator and compare him to Hitler. Here we have it, from the New York Times:

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said that Congress needed to repeal the 2008 human trafficking law. “The message has to be, ‘If you cross our border illegally, you will be returned immediately,' ” he said.

Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said the Department of Health and Human Services, which takes in many of the unaccompanied children, needed to be cut out of the process so that law enforcement officials could ship them home more quickly.