No date for visits to migrant centers
Administration hasn’t allowed news media in
WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide a specific date for when the media will get access to Border Patrol facilities temporarily holding thousands of migrant children seeking to live in the United States, but said Sunday the Biden administration was committed to transparency and “we’re working to get that done as soon as we can.”
More than 16,000 unaccompanied children were in government custody as of Thursday, including about 5,000 in substandard Customs and Border Protection facilities.
Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been calling on the administration to open the facilities to the cameras, asserting that the current policy is designed to keep the public from “fully realizing” what is happening at the border.
Republican officials are also blaming the Biden administration for actions they say are leading more people from Central America to seek entry into the United States.
“It’s not a crisis; it’s a complete loss of sovereignty down there,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said.
Graham recently visited the border and said he saw a facility designed to hold 80 children with about 1,000 in it. He called on the administration to turn away every unaccompanied minor after testing them for “human trafficking abuses.”
“If you don’t, we’ll have 150,000 a month by this summer,” Graham said Sunday.
The Biden administration continued to emphasize on the Sunday talk shows that the U.s.-mexico border “remains closed” and that the majority of adults are being turned away. But Psaki said the administration was not going to force children to go back on a treacherous journey.
Psaki said the administration is committed to providing access to those temporary Border Patrol facilities as soon as it can.
“We are mindful of the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We want to keep these kids safe, keep the staff safe,” Psaki said.