They would prefer to do what they do out of our sight. Then they could control what everyone sees. They would show the cleanest places, the least shocking things.

When local officials came for their tour, they saw the cleaner bathrooms, the smaller dorms. They didn’t see the places with hundreds of beds packed together in conditions described by trained inspectors as dangerously overcrowded.

They didn’t see the procedure when a child “ages out” and is put in shackles for transport to an adult prison. Maybe they saw, but didn’t understand what they were seeing as the children, with IDs hanging around their necks, were moved single file from place to place, always accompanied by guards. Perhaps they missed the one telephone set up for kids to report abuse, in full sight of potential abusers.

They didn’t see the system that separated these refugee children from their families at the border, or that picked them up in random raids by ICE. And they may have asked, in front of the folks giving the tour, how the food was, and were happy to hear the kids say OK.

And they were pleased that they didn’t have to worry, because they didn’t see, on their tour, overt signs of misery.

The misery recorded by people trained to ask the children, in private, questions that revealed their misery. Declaration after declaration recording desperation, depression and suffering.

They didn’t read that. They would rather be shown around by a public relations team. And come out and report that everything is hunky dory.

They didn’t hear anyone crying themselves to sleep at night. They just went home.