News outlets readily described a “crisis” at the border under then-President Barack Obama when he sought funding to deal with a surge of migrants, many of them women and children — but now that President Trump is in the White House, the mainstream media seem far more reluctant to use the word.
Back in the summer of 2014, the headlines and stories referring to the C-word were plentiful as the border surge was taken seriously along the Acela corridor.
The Washington Post wrote in 2014, “White House requests $3.7 billion in emergency funds for border crisis,” while CNN published a feature, “Daniel’s journey: How thousands of children are creating a crisis in America.” It described a problem of “epic proportions.”
Around the same time, the Huffington Post declared that “photos of the humanitarian crisis” along the southern border were “shocking,” and ABC News reported that Obama requested “$3.7 billion to cope with the humanitarian crisis on the border and the spike in illegal crossings by unaccompanied minors from Central America.”
The ABC News story, “Obama’s Plans for $3.7 Billion Immigration Crisis Funds,” included a photo of detainees sleeping in “holding cells” at an Arizona placement center. In June 2014, NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell said that undocumented children flooding the borderwere “creating a crisis” for authorities.- READ MORE