For months, Democratic politicians have been pulling political stunts to garner media attention and siding with illegal immigrants over their own constituents.
The latest attention-getter is U.S. Congressman Don Beyer, D-Va., who met with illegal MS-13 and 18th Street gang members and other criminal illegal aliens at Farmville Detention Center.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security slammed Beyer’s visit and false claims that most detainees are there for civil immigration offenses.
“He continues to do the bidding of dangerous criminal illegal aliens that endanger his own constituents,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “When will Congressman Beyer meet with the American victims of these illegal aliens’ violent crimes?”
During Beyer’s Aug. 8 tour of the detention center in Prince Edward County, Va., he personally requested to meet with criminal detainees including an 18th Street gang member, drug trafficker and repeat offender of driving under the influence. Additionally, he met with an MS-13 gang member.
But there’s more.
On Monday, the Democratic half of Colorado’s U.S. House delegation visited a detention facility in Aurora and emerged with more questions than answers, according to Colorado Public Radio, an arm of public broadcasting being slashed by Congress for biased reporting at taxpayers’ expense.
In an all-too familiar fashion, Democratic lawmakers are going to great lengths to highlight and politicize the conditions of immigration detention centers—accusing the Trump administration of denying them access to information and keeping people in poor conditions.
And yet they turned a blind eye to the conditions in immigrant processing centers and migrant shelters used to house illegal immigrants under President Joe Biden’s open-border policies. Biden’s disastrous policies created the current mess of how to safely and humanely deport millions of illegal immigrants.
In Chicago, migrants slept on the streets and inside police stations, even taking over a shuttle bus center at O’Hare International Airport’s Terminal 1. FOX 32 Chicago, the Chicago Tribune and several news outlets reported on the crisis in the fall of 2023.
In March 2024, a former warehouse turned migrant shelter in Pilsen had one of Chicago’s first measles cases in years, which led to a measles outbreak, and a 5-year-old in the same shelter died from sepsis caused primarily by strep throat, the Chicago Sun Times reported.
But now they’re concerned about the care that criminal gangsters and pedophiles receive instead of advocating for their deportation—or showing sympathy for the people victimized by their crimes.
According to DHS, 66% of detainees housed at Farmville Detention Center have been convicted or charged with crimes in the United States. This figure does not include those with criminal charges in their home countries, confirmed gang affiliations or suspected terrorists.
In a news release, DHS highlighted some of the people Beyer met with at Farmville:
- Carlos Amaya, an MS-13 gang member. His criminal history includes convictions for four counts of assault and battery and three counts of gang participation.
- Ricardo Hernandez Mendez, an 18th Street gang member. His criminal history includes convictions for two counts of assault and battery, burglary to commit armed larceny, armed petit larceny, abduction by force, intimidation or deception, misdemeanor assault, parental kidnapping, and simple assault.
- Denis Hernandez Medina, a criminal illegal alien convicted of possession and distribution of drugs.
- Kevin Mark Cash, a criminal illegal alien convicted of Driving Under the Influence and two counts of reckless driving.
Following the visit, Beyer claimed to WRIC ABC 8News “maybe as many as three quarters” of the detainees “only have a civil reason for being there,” citing conversations during his tour.
He scheduled the oversight visit amid an uptick of ICE arrests across Virginia. Beyer told 8News said the hours-long tour revealed “serious medical challenges” inside the facility, including strained staff and detainees with mental health issues.
Beyer wants immigration enforcement to be targeted not sweeping.
“We don’t want just indiscriminate picking up of everyone who’s here without papers because America is the land of immigrants,” Beyer said. “We do want the bad guys out. I just hope that ICE is discriminating in the people that they pick up and the people they deport.”
The Colorado representatives held a news conference and claim workers at the Aurora facility, managed by the private company GEO, declined to tell the representatives how many detainees were inside.
They also said they also could not learn characteristics of the detainees, including how many had pending or prior criminal charges as opposed to those picked up as collateral detentions, per CBS News Colorado.
Democrat U.S. Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado’s 6th District called it “unacceptable” and said he knows the office in Denver has this information; they’re just not giving it up. His Congressional district includes the facility in Aurora.
“Because during intake, they actually assign people a level … a red, orange, green and blue based on the criminal records, so I know the facility knows who has been picked up because they’ve committed a violent crime versus everyone else,” Crow said in the Colorado Public Radio report.
Crow, along with three of his Democratic colleagues representing the Denver metro area, Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen, okayed the tour of the GEO detention facility ahead of time with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“I’ve been in a lot of correctional facilities in my life, and if you have to give seven days’ notice, they clean up pretty good,” said DeGette, who represents Denver.
Both Crow and Neguse, in recent months, have been turned away when they’ve tried unannounced visits, they said.
At least one Republican in the Colorado delegation, Rep. Gabe Evans of the 8th district, has also visited the Aurora facility. In June he said there were about 1,300 detainees being held there, with 57 % of them having some kind of criminal history or pending charge.
Pettersen said when she walked through the facility, it felt “like a prison” even though it’s technically a civil detention facility.
“We care deeply about making sure that the people who are being held there are treated humanely, that they have access to the healthcare that they need, but also that they’re able to reach for assistance outside of this facility,” she said.
