TEXAS — Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Friday, along with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, led a tour of a migrant facility located in Donna, Texas.

A few hours north, in Carrizo Springs, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, led a group of congressional Democrats on a tour of a facility located there.

While both tours were followed by news conferences, news cameras were not permitted in either facility for the actual tours. 

That’s not sitting well with Cruz, and the junior senator from Texas this past weekend sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to permit news cameras inside those facilities so that the public can see for themselves conditions as more migrants make their way across the border.

The letters reads, in part, “On Friday, when we held a press conference on the banks of the Rio Grande to explain what we were seeing, journalists from across the country came to report. Yet not a single one of those cameras, and not a single one of those reporters, was allowed inside the Donna Facility that we toured earlier that day. They could not show the American people what it looks like when a tent city built to house 250 children under COVID restrictions instead houses 4,200.”

In the letter, Cruz accuses the president of actively working to keep people from seeing for themselves the severity of the situation near the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The reporters and the cameras could not see any of this because you, President Biden, prevented it. I sent you a letter urging you to allow us to bring media with us. Not only did you refuse, you actively worked to prevent the American public from seeing what you saw,” Cruz wrote.

“I will commit to transparency, as soon as I am in the position to implement what we are doing,” the president said at a news conference last week. When pressed on how long it would take for that to happen, Biden said he didn’t know.

Cruz said the previous administrations permitted media access.

“This is outrageous. The Trump administration allowed media into DHS facilities. So did the Obama administration, the Bush administration, and the Clinton administration. But you want to hide what is going on,” he wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.