On Friday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, host Mitchell asserted that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was "blaming the victim" when she correctly warned that it is very dangerous to cross the desert illegally in reaction to recent news of a child dying possibly of dehydration after her father crossed the desert illegally from Mexico.
Correspondent Jacob Soboroff suggested that the Trump administration is "forcing" illegals to cross under dangerous circumstances through the desert because of long wait times at legal ports of entry. And, in the segment that lasted eight minutes, no one got around to clarifying that the number of detainees who die in the custody of Border Patrol each year is about the same as it was during the Obama administration.
At 12:46 p.m. Eastern, after recalling that the girl died in Border Patrol custody after her father reportedly took her through the desert, depriving her of food and water for days, Mitchell then brought aboard Soboroff who soon complained:
It's a terrible situation, Andrea, but it's not one, I hate to say, that is all that surprising given the conditions that migrants are crossing in these days because of the enforcement strategy by the Trump administration and, critics would say, largely forcing people to cross in the desert, having a hard time presenting in ports of entry.
He soon noted that "deaths in the desert are going up," as he related that some blame the Trump administration's "deterrent-type policy."
A bit later, right-leaning never Trump MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes declared that President Donald Trump is "demagoguing" a "humanitarian crisis" on the border, and complained about "cruelty."
"We have the juxtapositon of the cruelty and the human loss versus the crude distortion that we're getting from the White House. We're seeing this week the intersection of the corruption and cruelty of this administration," Sykes stated.
Mitchell soon showed a clip of Secretary Nielsen from the same day's Fox and Friends in which she warned against the dangers of illegal immigrants crossing through the desert. In reaction, Mitchell bristled: "That sounds to me like blaming the victim."
Former Democratic Congressman Steve Israel not surprisingly then agreed with her negative critique of Nielsen as he responded.
