Donald Trump's administration can't decide on a strategy to defend their policy of indiscriminately jailing immigrant children at the Mexican border. Trump's position is that it's a terrible tragedy that Democrats inflicted on us and they won't end it by giving him a border wall. Stephen Miller says it's a "simple decision" that no one should apologize for. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says it's kinda sad, sure, but the Bible requires it. Jeff Sessions says the same but without the sad part.

Now U.S. Border Patrol has weighed in, objecting to how the child detention centers are being depicted in the media. Specifically, they take issue with the word "cages," not because it's inaccurate but because it makes them look bad.

CBP here is making the same argument as Breitbart, claiming that the cages are merely "chain-link partitions." For some context, these are the images that CBP itself has supplied to the media:

We're relying on these photos because journalists aren't allowed to take photos in many of these facilities. Even senators, like Jeff Merkley from Oregon, have been refused entry. Merkley eventually got access to one detention center, but it's impossible to know how, or even if, these children are being properly cared for. And in light of recent allegations of CBP verbally, sexually, and physically abusing children in custody in the past several years, the administration's wild refusal of anything resembling transparency is all the more troubling.

But according to Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump's secretary for Homeland Security, there's no need for transparency or accountability because everything's fine. In fact, there is no formal policy for splitting up families at all.

Shortly after tweeting that, Nielsen held a press conference in New Orleans where she insisted that DHS will "not apologize" for splitting up families. At that press conference, she also instructed listeners, "Don't believe the press," adding that the detained children the government forcibly separated from their families are well taken care of and given everything they want.

There's no reason to believe any of Nielsen's accounts here, and it's precisely because journalists have been so restricted in covering exactly what happens at these detention centers. But here's one media account that Nielsen is instructing Americans not to believe, from the Associated Press:

An advocate who spent several hours in the facility Friday said she was deeply troubled by what she found.

Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, met with a 16-year-old girl who had been taking care of a young girl for three days. The teen and others in their cage thought the girl was 2 years old.

“She had to teach other kids in the cell to change her diaper,” Brane said.

This is from a Border Patrol facility in Texas, where Brane also reported seeing officials "scold a group of 5-year-olds for playing around in their cage, telling them to settle down. There are no toys or books."