Former President Barack Obama’s top immigration chief in charge of removing illegal immigrants said that the “cages” Democrats have accused President Trump of housing children in were the brainchild of the Obama administration.

“I’ve been to that facility, where they talk about cages. That facility was built under President Obama under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson. I was there because I was there when it was built,” said Thomas Homan, who was Obama’s executive associate director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for nearly four years.

At an immigration conference today, Homan, under consideration for a new position of “border czar” in the Trump administration, grew visibly angry answering a question about “cages” often cited by Democratic critics of the president.

Homan, who ran Obama’s successful deportation operation, ripped Democrats who question Trump immigration officials on the Obama-era idea.

He cited one Democratic chairman who asked a Trump official, “You still keeping kids in cages?”

Homan, at the conference hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies, said, “I would answer the question, ‘The kids are being house in the same facility built under the Obama administration.’ If you want to call them cages, call them cages. But if the left wants to call them cages and the Democrats want to call them cages then they have to accept the fact that they were built and funded in FY 2015.”

He said that the Border Patrol facilities where all illegals are initially kept “were not built to take care of children.” In fact, the recent surge of younger illegal immigrants is a new trend.

He said that there are no cages but chain-link fencing that separates kids from adults, done for safety. “It’s chain link dividers that keeps children separate from unrelated adults. It’s about protecting children,” he said.

What’s more, he said that it is only a holding facility until another agency that is part of Health and Human Services can collect them. But, he said, Congress hasn’t adequately funded HHS.

And he said that the humanitarian aid bill working through Congress would help, but he said the House version amounts to “extortion” because it cuts funding for enforcement.