Border Patrol ‘Very Uncomfortable’ With Use of the Word ‘Cages’ to Describe Detention Facilities

A representative from Border Patrol told CBS News Monday that the agency is “very uncomfortable” with news outlets using the term “cages” to describe conditions at detention facilities, but it’s not inaccurate, according to a tweet from CBS News. The Border Patrol representative told CBS that “cages” was misleading because migrants aren’t being treated like animals. The term emerged this weekend after U.S. Customs and Border Patrol released photos from inside a Texas detention center, in which children and families sat inside large wire-mesh, chain-linked cages. The facility, according to BBC, houses over 1,100 immigrants. Amid national outrage and bipartisan condemnation, former first lady Laura Bush noted: “These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.” Another democratic congressman who visited the Texas site, reports BBC, called it “nothing short of a prison.”