Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan denied on Sunday that the food, water, and cell conditions at the Clint, Texas child migrant facility are “inadequate.”
A Saturday New York Times report featured Clint border agents who described the children’s clothes as being so dirty that the smell would spread to agents’ own clothes, and that there were outbreaks of scabies, shingles and chickenpox in the cramped cells.
During an interview on “This Week,” McAleenan told ABC News host Martha Raddatz that the facility is “cleaned every day.”
“Inadequate food, inadequate water and uncleaned cells,” he listed. “None of those have been substantiated.”
When Raddatz pressed McAleenan on the specific allegations in the Times’ report, he admitted that it was “an extraordinarily challenging situation,” but that there was “no evidence” that children were going hungry.
“So I’m not denying that there are challenging situations at the border. I’ve been one talking about it the most,” McAleenan said. “What can I tell you right now is that there’s adequate food, water.”
McAleenan also denied the Times’ allegations that the senior officials heading the Clint facility were ignoring agents’ alerts of the squalid conditions.
“Everyone in the entire chain of command was worried about the situation for children,” he said.
Watch McAleenan below:
Acting DHS chief Kevin McAleenan: Reports of dirty clothes, scabies and chickenpox at Clint child migrant facility are "unsubstantiated" pic.twitter.com/3PNm1J0ug0
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 7, 2019
