While discussing the temporary end to the government shutdown on Friday afternoon, President Trump appeared to meander out of the Rose Garden and into a “Law & Order: SVU” episode. Once there, he described a horrific scene that seems to exist only in his own mind, but that he’s been repeating in speeches for weeks: There are migrant women at the border. They are being tortured. They have tape on their mouths.
Specifically: “Women are tied up, with duct tape on their faces, put in the backs of vans,” the president said, citing human traffickers who he alleges are the perpetrators of this violence against migrants.
But women are not tied up, experts have said. They do not have tape on their mouths. When Trump repeated this claim a few weeks ago, my colleague Katie Mettler contacted many authorities on trafficking who have spent time at the border, and none of them had seen or heard anything resembling the violence he described.
View the complete January 26 column by Monica Hesse on The Washington Post website here.