On Thursday, First Lady Melania Trump visited McAllen, Texas, to witness firsthand the crisis immigrant families are facing as children separated from their parents are held at detention centers on the Mexico-U.S. border. And her message-emblazoned choice of outerwear leading up to her official appearance has the Internet outraged.
As she boarded the plane to Texas, FLOTUS was photographed boarding the plane to Texas wearing a green Zara jacket (which appears to be from a two-year-old collection), featuring the words “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” written in graffiti lettering across the back.
Mrs. Trump toured two facilities run by the Department of Homeland Security during her trip to McAllen: the Ursula Border Patrol Processing Center, a Customs and Border Patrol intake center, and Upbring New Hope Children’s Shelter, a Health and Human Services grantee facility that currently houses about 60 kids (ages 5-17, though mostly teens) from Honduras and El Salvador.
Her visit comes on the heels of her husband, President Donald Trump’s, decision to reverse his administration’s policy to separate children from their detained parents who crossed the border seeking asylum. Thousands of children remain separated from their families, many in different states, with no clear plan to reunite them.
Many Twitter users were quick to call out Mrs. Trump’s jacket as tone deaf, with some suggested that she may even be “trolling” her husband.
According to CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, a spokesperson for the First Lady had the following response the negative buzz over Mrs. Trump choice of outerwear: “It’s a jacket. There was no hidden message. After today’s important visit to Texas, I hope the media isn’t going to choose to focus on her wardrobe.”
The first lady’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said that Mrs. Trump “wanted see everything for herself,” adding that she wanted to “see these children and she wants to help children. … She wants to see what’s real. She wants to see a realistic view.”
“She supports family reunification,” Grisham added. “She thinks that it’s important that children stay with their families. … She’s seen the images. She’s heard the recordings… She was on top of the situation before any of that came out. She was concerned about it. … The images struck her, as a mother, as a human being.”
Trump spent time speaking with facility members and doctors employed by the shelter and observing the facilities before saying to the children, “Bye. Good luck” as she exited.
