The divisions and battles in politics are something most of us have come to expect. However, mostly what we are used to are those battles across the aisle involving party lines. It's a little different when you witness a conflict erupting between a politician and the heads of a government agency.
But, when Ted Deutch is that politician, the surprise is diminished.
Things kicked off when, during a House oversight committee meeting with Health and Human Service (HHS) officials, Deutch was full of accusations of impropriety within the agency. This sprang from a House hearing on separations of immigrant families, and Deutch used his time to level severe accusations. Deutch was at his manipulative best.
“Over the past three years there have been 154 staff-on-unaccompanied minor allegations of sexual assault.” He goes on to declare these were “employees of HHS”, and then he really ramped up the charges. “When you carried the zero-tolerance policy...you knew that putting thousands of kids -- you knew -- that putting thousands of kids into a situation where they were at risk of sexual abuse was going to be the result.”
Responding to Deutch was Commander Jonathan White, the deputy director for children's programs at HHS. He shot down Deutch’s charges instantly. “Let me first correct an error,” said White, far too politely. “Those are not HHS staff in any of those allegations. That statement is false.” At that point Deutch began speaking over Commander White, clearly intent on limiting the rebuttal, and wanting his accusations to stand on the record.
Watch the video below, and note that in the duration that Deutch poses numerous accusatory questions, but allows for no answers, in what constitutes a filibuster on his behalf.
What Deutch does here is a series of conflations intended to demonize the agency, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Note Deutch mentions allegations, not “incidents”, as this is how he inflated things to number into the thousands. He does not clarify that those thousands of reported issues comprised mostly of incidents between unaccompanied youth, not staff-on-UAC. His charge as well that HHS officials knew full well these incident would in fact take place ahead of time, and that they did nothing to halt those incidents.
Deutch -- who it must be noted here is the Chair of the House Ethics Committee -- intentionally mischaracterized what was transpiring. By exaggerating the claims, and verbally accusing those who were not named in the reports Deutch cited, he clearly wanted the official record to reflect something other than what was supported by the data.
For this reason HHS and the ORR sent a letter to Deutch that not only corrected his false claims, but they have outright refused to a follow up meeting with Deutch at his office concerning the matter. In response to a request for further questioning with Deutch and his staff Jonathan H. Hayes, of the ORR, was very direct in his declining to meet the Representative.
“By deliberately or negligently mischaracterizing the data during a televised hearing, you impugned the integrity of hundreds of federal civil servants. On behalf of these dedicated employees of HHS assigned to the UAC program, we request that you apologize to these career civil servants for your untoward and unfounded comments. Acknowledging that you were in the wrong is the moral, decent and right thing to do."
This is a clear message that HHS and the ORR were not willing to stand idle as they were slandered in the official record by Ted Deutch. In an effort to see to it that the Florida Representative understood the actual facts in those reports Hayes gave a listing of the corrected record. He then closed by making it clear they were not in any hurry to sit down with Deutch.
“Your office staff requests an additional briefing from ORR program officials on these allegations. ORR will be happy to meet with you once you correct the hearing record and provide an apology to the dedicated men and women working tirelessly to protect and improve the lives of unaccompanied alien children in our care."
This has to be a rebuke that Deutch is not accustomed to receiving, as evidenced by his words to Politico. “What I find so shocking and so disconcerting is the seeming acceptance of any number of staff on unaccompanied minor cases of sexual assault," he told POLITICO. "The tolerance for those horrific acts should be zero.”
It would seem, however, that he expects government agencies to tolerate his exaggerating and erroneously accusing of horrific acts in official House testimony.
Brad Slager, a Fort Lauderdale freelance writer, wrote this story exclusively for Sunshine State News. He writes on politics and the entertainment industry and his stories appear in such publications as RedState and The Federalist.
