President Trump slammed Democrats on Tuesday after years-old photos circulated over the weekend showing immigrant children in a holding facility near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Democrats and journalists shared the photos, published by The Arizona Republic in 2014, amid reports that Trump administration had lost 1,500 immigrant children while they were in U.S. custody.

Many of the social media posts spreading the photos did not clarify that the photos were from 2014, when Barack Obama was president. The photos showed children sleeping in fenced-in cages.

“Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country...Bipartisan Bill!”



Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country...Bipartisan Bill! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2018



The Department of Health and Human Services on Monday denied it lost the children, and said the caretakers tasked with watching over them hadn’t responded to the government’s follow-up contacts.

"These children are not 'lost,'" Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan said in a statement. "Their sponsors — who are usually parents or family members and in all cases have been vetted for criminality and ability to provide for them — simply did not respond or could not be reached."

[Related: Twitter blasts Ivanka Trump for posting picture with son as migrant children go missing]