It’s not every day that a random encounter between two politicians in an airport results in an in-your-face confrontation. It happened to Senator Ted Cruz Sunday as he waited to board a plane at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). His confronter was a California politician.

Hillary Ronen, a San Francisco Supervisor, literally got in Cruz’s face to berate him over the Trump administration’s enforcement of immigration law at the southern border. Her specific beef with Cruz is family separation and the “caging” of children. She turned her opposition to the administration’s policy into a personal attack on the senator.

“We are horrified with what is happening with the caging of children and separation of families,” Ronen told Cruz. “I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”

The confrontation began after Ronen noticed a group of AFSCME 3299 union members gathered around Senator Cruz chanting “Free the children” at him. She joined the group to publicly berate Cruz. Her rant was captured on video, of course, and Ronen posted the scene on her Facebook page Monday morning.

https://www.facebook.com/hillary.ronen/posts/10157979470857565

Her outrage aimed toward those in elected office isn’t limited to immigration policy, you’ll note. She boasts that she will also cause a public confrontation over gun control, according to her Facebook post. She introduced herself to Cruz as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and ran through her credentials as a legislator representing a large Latinx community in San Francisco. As she began her appeal to Cruz, you can hear a Trump supporter in the background tell Cruz he supports the administration’s immigration policies.

Cruz began to explain that the detention policy isn’t a new one under President Trump, but she wasn’t having it. Democrats refuse to acknowledge the laws on the books, passed by previous Congresses. The cages to which she refers were built during President Obama’s administration. “I don’t care who built the cages,” she said. “Dismantle them.”

In the San Francisco Examiner piece on this confrontation, I noticed some editorial bias coming through in the reporting. Look at the first four words of the two paragraphs devoted to describing Cruz’s work on conditions at the border.

Despite his party affiliation, Cruz has made some efforts to address conditions at the border. Earlier this month he wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, urging them to set up a process to accept donations for migrants in custody.

Cruz also led an effort with Texas Sen. John Cornyn to pass a bipartisan $4.6 billion bill to fund humanitarian aid at the border, including in those detention centers. That bill was initially critiqued by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who backs a competing House bill authored by Democrats with more provisions to ensure humane care for people detained at the border, according to the New York Times, before the two parties eventually brokered a compromise.

“Despite his party affiliation”? Really? This is a prime example of media bias on behalf of the Democrat narrative – those evil Republicans hate brown people. Cruz, unfortunately, is used to public confrontations and remained calm, even as the crowd around him broke out into chants. One supporter even moved toward Cruz and took a photo with him.

One unidentified individual yelled “Americans will not be silenced,” which led to a group chant of “free the children!”

Cruz remained calm and appeared unfazed, even stopping to pose for a picture with a fan in the middle of the chaos, as protesters continued to yell around them.

The man who took the photograph then tried to create space between the Texas Republican and the protesters, before offering him a path out of the crowd.

It all goes with the territory of being an elected official, especially a high profile one like Senator Cruz. A little more honesty would be appreciated, though, in the reporting of such scenes. Editorial bias doesn’t help encourage both sides to work together to find solutions when both parties agree that something must be done to ease the humanitarian crisis on the southern border. Elected officials putting on a show for those with a mob mentality at the expense of another public servant doesn’t move the issue forward either.