Arizona politician mistakes YMCA campers for migrant children

Republican congressional candidate and state legislator Adam Kwasman had just raced up to Phoenix Tuesday morning from the Oracle protest over the expected arrival of dozens of migrant children at a shelter.

He had tweeted from the scene, "Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law." He included a photo of the back of a yellow school bus.

Kwasman later told me he saw the migrant children. "I was actually able to see some of the children in the buses. The fear on their faces.... This is not compassion," he said.

But there was a problem with Kwasman's story: There was no fear on their faces. Those weren't the migrant children in the school bus. Those were children from the Marana school district. They were heading to the YMCA's Triangle Y Camp, not far from the Rite of Passage shelter for the migrants, at the base of Mt. Lemmon.

12 News reporter Will Pitts, who was at the protest scene, says he saw the children laughing and taking pictures of the media.

I had to break it to Kwasman that those weren't migrant children. Kwasman later deleted the tweet. He did back flips trying to take back the story he told me.

And while the YMCA kids showed up, the bus that Kwasman and other protesters were waiting for — packed with migrant children — won't be going to the shelter today, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Kwasman is running in the 1st Congressional District GOP primary against House Speaker Andy Tobin and businessman Gary Kiehne. The winner will face Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick in the general election.

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