Democratic lawmaker says officials tried to keep her from migrant girls during facility tour

Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) on Wednesday said she was not allowed to see all of the girls being held at a facility for migrant children that she visited in Homestead, Fla. 

“I was truly concerned about the adolescent girls and, for some reason, they kept shifting my focus and trying not for me to see the adolescent girls, so I demanded that I would not leave until we saw the girls,” she said in an appearance on CNN.

{mosads}She noted that she did later see some of the girls, but not all of them. 

“I saw the girls that I demanded to see but not all of them. I saw the 17-year-olds,” she said. 

She said the migrant girls had to go outside to use the bathroom in a portable toilet regardless of the weather.

She said she does not “trust” the facility with adolescent girls and girls going through puberty. 

“Those were the girls that I didn’t see, the 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds,” she said. She added that she would go back to try to see these girls. 

Wilson said called the facility is a “money-making scheme” and called for it to be shut down. 

Government watchdog photos show extreme overcrowding and dire conditions in Border Patrol facilities.@RepWilson says she was not allowed to see adolescent migrant girls. “I think it’s a money-making scheme … This place needs to be shut down,” she says. https://t.co/umdnT3G33B pic.twitter.com/r3Bfjoevmn

— New Day (@NewDay) July 3, 2019

Wilson also lamented her lack of access to the girls on Tuesday in a press conference outside the facility. 

“I did not see the girls,” she said. “So I am not prepared to leave this facility until I see the girls,”

A spokesperson for Caliburn later pushed back on Wilson’s remarks, telling The Hill in a statement that the congresswoman’s visit included seeing “a room of about 40 girls on the south side of the shelter.”

The spokesperson claimed that Wilson “was taken to see several different rooms in the school section of the shelter occupied by around 30 to 40 young ladies.”

Wilson led a congressional delegation on Tuesday which included Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and House Homeland Security Committee Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) to tour the Homestead facility.

Updated July 3, 7:15 p.m.