Sen. Ted Cruz challenges AOC to visit the border and 'cry in front of the Biden cages' detaining children

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) dared Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to visit the humanitarian crisis at the U.S. southern border. Cruz challenged AOC to visit detention centers so she could see for herself the conditions that migrants are being kept in.

"I challenge every one of them: I challenge [Joe] Biden, I challenge [Kamala] Harris, I challenge AOC, who famously had a picture of her pretending to cry in front of a cage with children," Cruz told Fox News. "Come down to the Biden cages now, which are bigger and more full.

"Let's see AOC cry in front of the Biden cages. Let's see Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or [White House press secretary] Jen Psaki say 'there is no border crisis' as we stand in front of the Biden cages," Cruz said. "They are lying and they're counting on the media to cover up their lies, and it's incredibly cynical and it's wrong."

Cruz is referencing photos of Ocasio-Cortez taken in June 2018 of the progressive lawmaker appearing to cry on a road outside a tent city shelter in Tornillo, Texas, used to temporarily house migrants, including children.

Photojournalist Ivan Pierre Aguirre released the photos in June 2019, which were praised by Democrats and mocked by Republicans.

AOC shared the photos with the caption: "I'll never forget this, because it was the moment I saw with my own eyes that the America I love was becoming a nation that steals refugee children from their parents,& caged them. More kids died after this. To date, no one has been held accountable. We need to save these kids."

Cruz then targeted President Biden for the current border crisis. He declared that it was a "manmade" disaster created by the Biden administration's policies. Cruz noted that the border surge could be stopped by going "back to the policies that work" that were instituted under former President Donald Trump.

Cruz also attacked Biden for vowing to make Border Patrol agents "pay" for the false narrative that they were using "whips" against Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas. Cruz called it a "low point, even for this White House."

"I'm proud to know quite a few heroes in our Border Patrol, and, even before Biden's slander, they were demoralized and dispirited because under the Biden-Harris administration, they risk their lives to apprehend drug traffickers and human traffickers only to see their political superiors release them through the revolving door of Biden's open borders," Cruz proclaimed.

"Now, not only are they having their work undermined, but Biden is threatening political retribution because the open-border radicals in the Democratic Party believe that the Border Patrol are what [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi calls them: stormtroopers, analogizing them to Nazi soldiers," he continued.

"That is grotesquely unfair. It is wrong, destructive -- I am amazed that every Border Patrol agent in America doesn't say 'to hell with it' and refuse to come back to work," Cruz said, adding that young and old agents are quitting the Border Patrol.

Reports surfaced last week claiming that Border Patrol agents were furious that President Biden lambasted them for doing their job.

Last week, Cruz delivered a tongue-lashing to Democrats over their refusal to go to the border.

"I'll tell you, I've been to the border. I've been to the Biden cages. For four years, Democrats went on and on, the corrupt corporate media went on and on about kids in cages," Cruz said during his speech on the Senate floor. "You couldn't turn on the evening news without hearing [about] kids in cages. What they didn't tell you is Barack Obama built those cages. And today under Joe Biden, the cages are bigger, and they're more full than they were before."

"Why does Joe Biden refuse to go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if he goes, the TV cameras will come with him," Cruz continued. "Why does Kamala Harris, who's supposed to be the Border Czar, she's supposed to be in charge of this - why won't she go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if she went, the TV cameras would come and would show the Biden cages. And the Democrats are counting on the corrupt corporate media to suddenly say, 'Nothing to see here.'"

Cruz challenged every Democrat to visit Brooks County in South Texas, where he claimed there are dead bodies of illegal immigrants who were left by traffickers.

Cruz visited the U.S. southern border earlier this month, when there were over 10,000 illegal immigrants in Del Rio, Texas. Cruz called the flood of migrants at the border "the most horrific thing I've ever seen."

"It is packed in, it is a mass of humanity and it is, the scope of it, until you see it, they take your breath away because it just goes on and on and on. Infants, little children, people struggling enormously," Cruz said.

In March, Cruz visited the migrant processing facility in Donna, Texas. The Republican senator said "Biden's representatives" attempted to bar him from taking photos and videos of the cramped and overcrowded migrant facility.