DISORDER AT BORDER
BIDEN TAPS HARRIS TO FIX CRISIS
Vice President Kamala Harris will spearhead a Biden administration effort to stem a recent surge in mostly Central American migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border, taking on a task that she herself admitted Wednesday “will not be easy.”
President Biden announced Harris’ assignment while talking to reporters ahead of a closeddoor meeting with the veep, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other advisers about the increasingly volatile situation on the border.
“I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this,” Biden said, crediting Harris’ human rights work and prosecution of organized crime groups while serving as California’s attorney general.
The president added, “When she speaks, she speaks for me.”
Harris said she will in her new role put an emphasis on diplomatic engagement with Central American leaders and enforcement of applicable laws in the U.S. and abroad.
But she also stressed that the administration must address the “root causes” driving hundreds of thousands of migrants to make the dangerous journey to the U.S. every year.
“I look forward to engaging in diplomacy with government, with the private sector, with civil society and the leaders of each in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras,” Harris said, referring to the trio of Central American nations from which most migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border originate. “Needless to say, the work will not be easy, but it is important work.”
The announcement comes as the White House is facing mounting criticism from across the political spectrum over its handling of the increasingly volatile situation on the Mexican border.
Photos that emerged earlier this week revealed migrant children are being kept in overcrowded pods at a Border Patrol detention center in Texas, apparently in violation of coronavirus restrictions and often for longer than the three days permitted by law.
Republicans claim the overcrowding is a result of Biden’s decision to allow unaccompanied migrant children to stay in the U.S. while seeking asylum or other legal status.
Meantime, Democratic progressives and immigration advocates are fuming that Biden kept in place a Trump-era order to expel all other categories of migrants arriving in the country, citing public health concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Seeking to deflect some blame, Biden said the current spike in migration started under former President Donald Trump.
He also pointed fingers at Trump for eliminating a $700 million foreign aid program that he said would’ve strengthened economies in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and nipped the migration tide in the bud.
“This new surge we are dealing with now started with the last administration, but it’s our responsibility to deal with it humanely and to stop what’s happening,” Biden said, adding that
his administration will reinstitute the $700 million program as part of its effort to curb migration.
Biden’s unveiling of his border plan came on the same day as White House officials and a group of House Democrats, including Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan, Bronx), traveled to Carrizo Springs, Texas, along with a television news crew to tour a detention facility for underage migrants.
Critics have accused the Biden administration of trying to prevent the American people from seeing the grim conditions at border detention facilities by not allowing media access.
But the White House has pushed back, saying COVID-19 concerns necessitated keeping a lid on press coverage.
“We’ll continue to work with agencies on creating avenues for media access to and visibility into these facilities,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters before the trip on Wednesday.
More than 750 teenage males are being held at the Carrizo Springs facility, which is being managed by the Health and Human Services Department.
More than 100 of the teens are COVID-19-positive and in isolation, according to Health and Human Services. They likely contracted the virus while still in Border Patrol custody, where they’re often held in tight spaces.
The Biden administration has in recent weeks scrambled to open more than 10,000 new Health and Human Services beds across the Southwest in convention centers and former oilfield camps to accommodate migrant children stuck in Border Patrol custody.
By law, minors are supposed to be transferred to a sponsor or Health and Human Services custody within three days of being apprehended by Border Patrol.
But timely transfers are proving complicated for the Biden administration as waves of Central American migrants arrive at the border every day, fleeing gang violence, natural disasters, persehome cution and poverty in their countries. Despite the tumult, Biden and his top officials have rejected the idea that there’s a “crisis” on the border.