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“The number of migrant children and families seeking to cross the U.S. southwest border has surged to levels not seen since before the pandemic… Statistics released Wednesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed the number of children and families increased by more than 100% between January and February. Kids crossing by themselves rose 60% to more than 9,400.” AP News
In a press conference on Wednesday, Amb. Roberta Jacobson, the White House coordinator for the Southern Border, “stressed that people should not try and migrate to the United States across the border, for now. ‘La frontera no esta abierta,’ she said, repeating multiple times in Spanish that ‘the border is not open.’” NPR
In late February, it was announced that “President Joe Biden’s administration has reopened a tent facility to house up to 700 immigrant teenagers after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border unaccompanied by a parent… the first teens arrived at Carrizo Springs, Texas, which was converted two years ago into a holding facility under former President Donald Trump. The facility has been closed since July 2019.” AP News
The right criticizes Biden’s reversal of Trump’s border policies, and argues that his rhetoric has caused an influx of migrants at the border.
“Trump overemphasized the importance of the border wall, and had a number of false starts at the border, most notoriously the ‘zero tolerance’ policy that led to family separations. By the end, though, he had created an entirely reasonable system based on his lawful authorities to impose order at the border, while still allowing asylum seekers to apply for asylum in the U.S…
“Under Trump, the Migration Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in Mexico, ended the practice of letting Central American migrants into the U.S. while their asylum claims were adjudicated. This was crucial because under the old arrangement, asylum seekers were allowed into the U.S. while their claims were considered. Even if the claims were ultimately rejected, as the vast majority of them were, the migrants overwhelmingly ended up staying anyway (we lacked the will and resources to track down and deport them)…
“The premise of the overall Trump approach was that people who feared for their lives in their home country because of persecution don’t necessarily need to come to the United States to escape. It should be enough for them to go to another country in the region, or if they are indeed applying for asylum in the U.S., to stay in Mexico while doing so. Allowing them into the U.S., with no reliable internal enforcement mechanism to remove them if their claims are rejected, constitutes an end run around our immigration system.”
Rich Lowry, Politico
“This is the second time in the last two weeks that a top U.S. immigration official has resorted to begging people not to come… The obvious solution is for Biden to reinstate Trump’s rule authorizing the Border Patrol to use pandemic regulations to turn kids away, but progressives won’t tolerate that. So we’re stuck with [border czar Roberta] Jacobson’s lame pleas, plus the news that the White House is restarting the ‘Central American Minors Program’ in hopes of convincing families to keep their kids home and apply for admission from afar instead of sending them north…
“There’s evidence that this issue is beginning to bite him politically, which is good news inasmuch as it’ll give him a reason to take enforcement more seriously. Today’s new CNN poll shows his approval very solid on handling the pandemic (60/34) and moderately healthy on subjects like helping the middle class (50/43) and the economy (49/44), where he’ll probably improve as COVID recedes and the new stimulus bill begins to do its thing. On only one subject was he more than two points underwater, though. Yep, immigration — where he stands at 43/49.”
Allahpundit, Hot Air
“Locals aren’t happy with the inrush of illegal immigrants [either]. The heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley produced one of the biggest increases in Trump's percentages last fall. Laredo's Democratic congressman, Henry Cuellar, lamented recently that ‘migrants are illegally crossing, potentially exposing border communities to the coronavirus and putting us at risk.’ Biden may have called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s end to mandatory masking ‘Neanderthal’-esque, but the Biden administration seems happy to send infectious illegal immigrants all around the country.”
Michael Barone, Washington Examiner
“Biden has capitulated to the far-left members of his party who think we should let in everyone from Central America, no matter the legitimacy of their asylum claims… As Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a proud man of the left, has put it: ‘They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States.’ Reuters reports that those on the top levels of Mexico’s government are tearing their hair out over how this boosts the crime cartels, which cash in on ‘helping’ the migrants. That nation’s internal documents bewail Team Biden measures that ‘incentivize migration.’”
Editorial Board, New York Post
The left argues that Biden’s policies are not comparable to Trump’s family separation program, and urges him to pursue long-term solutions such as reducing instability in Central America.
The left argues that Biden’s policies are not comparable to Trump’s family separation program, and urges him to pursue long-term solutions such as reducing instability in Central America.
“It’s important to note that the Texas facility is run not by Border Patrol, but by the Office of Refugee Resettlement [ORR]… In this case, the overflow at ORR is being caused in part by the rise in migrant children arriving at the border alone, not after being separated from parents…
“We need to scrutinize whether the administration makes good on its promise to make the conditions under which ORR holds children, including at such warehouse facilities, genuinely more humane. Also crucial is whether the administration undertakes reforms to speed up the process of moving kids from ORR to guardians… [But] Comparing all this to ‘kids in cages’ confuses the debate in a way that obscures what the Biden administration is genuinely trying to accomplish — and thus makes it harder to actually hold the administration accountable on it.”
Greg Sargent, Washington Post
“Of course, it’s never OK to cage children, force them to sleep on floors covered with aluminum-foil blankets and deny them basic sanitation as Trump did. It’s never OK to rip babies from their mothers, deport the parent and lose contact with them. Biden isn’t doing any of that…
“The agency responsible for the temporary care of the unaccompanied children describes the facility as a self-sufficient site equipped with medical and fire services, a dining tent, a soccer field, a basketball court and all sorts of staff, including translators that are available 24/7… Where Biden erred was to open a facility that symbolizes Trump’s camps.”
Elvia Díaz, Arizona Republic
“We welcome Biden’s more humane approach, but wonder whether it will succeed in the face of the rising tide of juveniles arriving without parents or guardians. Once again the nation is watching its government strain to meet obligations Congress imposed to treat unaccompanied minors with the delicacy they deserve. Once again we see a growing crisis spotlight the broad inadequacies of the government’s immigration enforcement system to deal compassionately with human migration…
“The solutions require broad vision and actions, including efforts to reduce the instability in Central American countries that send so many people fleeing in the first place. Such efforts, of course, run into a headwind of deep-rooted corruption in some of those countries. But the longer the government leaves those broad solutions unfulfilled, the more it will be forced to deal with waves of migration, one crisis following another. We need a better way of doing this.”
Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times
“The White House was never likely to convince many Republicans, still in thrall to Mr. Trump, of the merits of a more humane asylum policy, let alone broader goals of legalizing 11 million long-term unauthorized immigrants, or even ‘dreamers’ brought to the country as children. But a chaotic flood of migrants crossing the border, and the resulting GOP demagoguery about ‘catch-and-release,’ increases the risk that moderates and independents could recoil from Mr. Biden’s push for immigration reform…
“The only real solution is a long-term one. It involves sending aid to Central America that improves conditions in the region; beefing up immigration courts with a major infusion of new judges to expand their capacity so that asylum claims are processed quickly and the years-long case backlog is shrunk; and, perhaps, screening and processing asylum applicants in Central America, perhaps Guatemala — a prospect that seems far off at best. For the time being, Mr. Biden must manage a balancing act, reestablishing the United States’ traditional role as a beacon for beleaguered immigrants while also avoiding a massive new wave of illegal immigration that many Americans would object to.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
