President Biden discourages migrants from coming to the U.S. as his administration scrambles to respond to a surge of unaccompanied migrants children coming into the U.S.
There’s been a major increased in the number, of migrant children, over 4,000, in U.S. custody. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement, “we are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”
Biden stated in an interview that he has no plans to visit the southern border. However, Presidential visits have the power to draw international attention to emergencies and emerging issues.
Over the weekend, Mayorkas directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with receiving, sheltering, and transferring migrant children. Moreover, the The Biden administration is building capacity to address the needs of children arriving at the U.S.- Mexico border alone.
During an interview Mayorkas stated, “What we are doing is addressing young children who come to the border to make claims under the humanitarian laws that our country has established years and years ago. And we are building the capacity to address the needs of those children when they arrive, but we are also, and critically, sending an important message that now is not the time to come to the border.”
While the surge in migrants is the result of multiple factors, including that the Biden Administration is perceived more relaxed than the previous administration, Republicans are specifically blaming Biden’s policies. House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, called the recent surge in migrants a “Biden border crisis”, he further stated, “This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration. There’s no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.”
Biden is also facing pressure from his own party over his immigration strategy. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois stated that he doesn’t believe that there’s enough support in Congress to pass a full immigration bill with a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants, a key point in Biden’s immigration plan.
Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas stated in an interview, “We’re not going to cage children or divide families or rip children from mothers’ arms, but we need an orderly process for migrants who qualify for asylum to hopefully ask for asylum in their home country or a neighboring country or maybe build a center in southern Mexico where they can be processed there.”
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