Migrant surge
Influx intensifies debate over immigration policy in US
A surge in migration to the United States’ southern border has intensified this week, along with the political debate on how the authorities should respond.
As of Sunday morning, US Border Patrol was holding more than 4,200 unaccompanied children in shortterm facilities, including jail-like stations, according to government records reviewed by CBS News.
Nearly 3,000 of the unaccompanied children in Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, custody had been held longer than 72 hours. The agency is legally obligated to transfer most unaccompanied minors to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees shelters licensed to house children, within three days of taking them into custody.
The number of unaccompanied children in CBP custody on Sunday was up 31 over last week, when the agency was holding more than 3,200 minors, CBS reported.
From his first day in office, President Joe Biden has moved to dismantle his predecessor Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policy.
On Jan 20, the day Biden was inaugurated, he rescinded Trump’s order to build a wall along the southwest border. The wall was Trump’s signature campaign issue in 2016. Biden also changed a program that required migrants to apply for asylum in Mexico, as opposed to the US.
Biden restored the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation.
The surge in migration, particularly of unaccompanied children, at the border with Mexico is being attributed by some to Biden’s policy actions.
US authorities arrested and encountered more than 100,000 migrants over the four weeks ending on March 3, according to data obtained by CNN, the highest level for that time frame in five years.
“We recognize this is a big problem. … we’re going to do everything we can to solve it,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. The administration has declined to refer to the border situation as a crisis.
Psaki has said that any unaccompanied minors who make it to the border would not be turned away.
Many are held in CBP holding cells known as iceboxes or hieleras. They have concrete rooms and metal benches but no beds.
Emergency center
The Biden administration on March 5 reopened an emergency influx center for children in Carrizo Springs, Texas, a shelter whose use during the Trump administration was derided as “kids in cages”. It will hold 700 children aged 13 to 17.
The Biden administration also is turning to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help with the unaccompanied children.
The agency will work over the next three months to receive, shelter and transfer children who arrive alone at the border, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Saturday.
“I know the president’s going to travel this week. This is where he should bring Air Force One,” House of Representatives Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said on a trip to the border city of El Paso, Texas, on Monday, accompanied by other Republican politicians.
Biden has dropped Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as “Remain in Mexico”, which kept asylum-seekers waiting for court dates outside the US.
Another policy, known as “catch and release”, was used under the administration of Barack Obama and reinstated by Biden. It allows migrants to be released in the US as they await court proceedings instead of remaining in detention. If they fail to show up at the hearings, as many do, they are then on their own in the country.
Annie Chen, a financial professional in Houston, told China Daily: “While it’s noble to accept refugees and immigrants from other countries, we also need to take stock of the impact on our own country.
“I do believe that immigrants will bring some benefit to this country, but there are also costs and consequences. The government has to provide job training, education and language services to support them and to help them settle down. Do we have enough resources to do all those? I think not.”
Professor Marisa S. Cianciarulo, a specialist in immigration law at Chapman University Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, wrote: “Many of the children arriving at the border either qualify for asylum or are in need of humanitarian aid. They are fleeing desperate conditions of poverty, child abuse, child neglect/abandonment, rape/molestation, gang violence,” she said.