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U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policies came under renewed scrutiny in March 2019, when photographs emerged that appeared to show relatively large numbers of undocumented immigrants being housed behind wire fencing under a bridge in El Paso, Texas. On 27 March, the website Grit Post published an article with the headline Trump Administration Cages Immigrants Under Bridge Because Detention Center Is Full, which went on to report that: That report prompted multiple inquiries from Snopes readers about the authenticity of the photographs in question and the facts surrounding them. On 27 March, Miroff and Moore did indeed post photographs showing the scene under the bridge. Miroff gave the following description of one of the photographs: This is El Paso right now, where hundreds of migrant families are being held in the parking lot of a Border Patrol station because there is no room for them inside, or anywhere else. For his part, Moore tweeted: Hundreds of migrants are being held under the Paso Del Norte Bridge in El Paso, near the site of [Customs and Border Protection agency] Commissioner [Kevin] McAleenan’s press conference. Setting aside the somewhat colored language used by Grit Post, which stated that the Trump administration had caged the immigrants, we find the substantive claim — that crowds of undocumented immigrants had been detained under a bridge in El Paso in March 2019 due to a backlog at the nearest official immigration center — was true. On 27 March, U.S. Border Patrol spokesperson Ramiro Cordero largely confirmed the facts as presented by the Post's Nick Miroff and Bob Moore, as well as in the Grit Post article, in an interview with the Texas Tribune. But Cordero indicated that the typical time spent by immigrants at the improvised facility was relatively short. The following are excerpts from the edited interview with Cordero that the Texas Tribune published on 27 March: On 28 March, the Associated Press published the following footage of the makeshift facility under the bridge: At a press conference held close to the Paso Del Norte bridge on 27 March, Border Commissioner McAleenan said the U.S. immigration system's breaking point has arrived, adding that the agency was facing an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis along the southwestern border, especially at El Paso.
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