IT'S YOUR PROBLEM, KAM
The buck stops with her. President Biden on Wednesday acknowledged the “challenging situation” unfolding as migrants rush to the US-Mexico border — and farmed out the search for a solution to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden, whose administration reversed some of former President Donald Trump’s more stringent immigration policies, then shied away from calling the ensuing surge a crisis, tapped Harris to hold talks with Mexico and Central American nations in his stead.
The veep will “lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that are going to need help in stemming” migration, Biden told reporters at the White House.
Tens of thousands of migrants have flocked to the border in recent weeks, including unaccompanied children who have ended up confined in cramped detention centers to await transfer to more accommodating shelters elsewhere with the government overwhelmed by the crush.
Biden pointed to Harris’ prior experience as attorney general and senator from border-adjacent California as qualifications to address the “serious spikes” in immigration — which he tried to pin on his Oval Office predecessor.
“This new surge we are dealing with now started in the past administration, but it is our responsibility,” said Biden.
While encounters at the crossing have increased every month since April 2020, they have particularly surged since Biden’s inauguration, jumping from 78,442 in January to 100,441 last month, according to US Customs and Border Protection statistics.
In an interview earlier Wednesday with “CBS This Morning,” Harris acknowledged that the US faces “a huge problem” at the border, but maintained a nearly administration-wide refusal to use the word “crisis.”
“Well, OK, look, it’s a huge problem. I’m not gonna pretend it’s not,” she said. “Are we looking at overcrowding at the border, particularly these kids? Yes. Should these kids be in the custody of HHS, the Health and Human Services, instead of the Border Patrol? Yes. Should we be processing these cases faster? Yes.
“This is, however, not going to be solved overnight.”
Like Biden, Harris claims that the administration inherited the problem.
“There are things that we need to do, especially since there was a system in place — previously, before the last administration — to allow us to process these kids in their country of origin,” she said. “That was dismantled, we have to reconstruct it. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
Meanwhile Wednesday, a joint delegation of White House officials and members of Congress traveled to Carrizo Springs, Texas, to review conditions at a detention center where more than 750 teen migrants are being held. Not among that group were Biden and Harris, who instead huddled at the White House with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to discuss the crisis.
Also mostly omitted was the news media, which has encountered a widespread blackout while trying to cover the crisis, with Customs and Border Protection officials explicitly ordering journalists not to photograph them or their actions.
Just one television crew was permitted to join Wednesday’s tour, but even that meager access represents an improvement from the recent lack of transparency.
During a Wednesday briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the press corps should use that “B-roll” footage — shot by an NBC News crew and shared with other outlets — as the basis of its coverage of the crisis.
The video would be “provided to all of the networks so that you can all see, as the media for yourself, and be able to provide analysis on that pool footage,” she told reporters.
But, citing restrictions due to privacy and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Psaki cautioned reporters that they shouldn’t expect an abundance of access going forward.
“These facilities of course can’t become forums for media access all day long,” she said.
Later in the briefing, Psaki did not deny the administration cherry-picked the Carrizo Springs center as “an aspirational facility” to show the media, meaning one with more favorable living conditions than other, tightly packed locations.
Psaki for weeks has promised that the White House was working to arrange facility tours for members of the media, but has refused to commit to a hard date — while maintaining the administration’s dedication to “transparency.”