White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley slammed Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley’s series of tweets alleging rebuffed attempts to gain entry to a detention facility over the weekend.
I was barred entry. Asked repeatedly to speak to a supervisor—he finally came out and said he can’t tell us anything. Police were called on us.
Children should never be ripped from their families & held in secretive detention centers. RT if you agree this is WRONG. pic.twitter.com/GVCuXNjR8d
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) June 4, 2018
A Department of Homeland Security spokesman quickly explained “At 2pm on a Friday, the Senator asked to visit a secure DHS facility over the weekend where children are present and we worked with him to provide him access. This presented obvious and serious privacy concerns – not to mention disrupting operations. He was able to visit the facility on Sunday.”
Gidley slammed Merkely, saying “Senator Merkley is irresponsibly spreading blatant lies about routine immigration enforcement while smearing hardworking, dedicated law enforcement officials at ICE and CBP,” adding “no one is taking a public safety lecture from Sen. Merkley, whose own policies endanger children, empower human smugglers and drug cartels, and allow violent criminal aliens to flood into American communities.”
A White House official also pointed to illegal immigrant crime in Merkely’s own state of Oregon where he is an advocate for sanctuary status pointing to “a 65 year-old Oregon woman who was sexually assaulted by an illegal alien that had been previously deported 20 times prior, and a young Oregon girl who was allegedly raped several times by a twice-deported illegal alien.”