‘The border is closed’: US deters adults but allows processing for child migrants
Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary said on Tuesday that even as the US processes a growing number of unaccompanied child migrants at the US-Mexico border, the country remains closed to most asylum seekers.
“Now is not the time to come to the border,” Alejandro Mayorkas said.
US border patrol officials encountered more than 15,000 children traveling without adults in January and February and officials have warned the numbers continue to grow in the first weeks of March. The arrivals threaten to overwhelm stretched federal agencies, putting children at risk, though Mayorkas told ABC News it was a challenge his department could handle.
“What we are doing is addressing young children who come to the border to make claims under the humanitarian laws established years and years ago and we are building capacity to address the needs of children when they arrive,” Mayorkas said. “But we are also, and critically, sending an important message that now is not the time to come to the border.”
Mayorkas said the border was not permanently closed to adults and families, but urged people to wait before approaching it.
“Give us the time to rebuild the system that was entirely dismantled in the prior administration,” he said.
The secretary also issued a lengthy statement, warning that the US was on pace to encounter more individuals at the border with Mexico than it had in the past 20 years.
His projection did not reflect a record number of people crossing the border, however, because it only included people apprehended by US border patrol – not those who cross
without getting caught. That group has shrunk dramatically since the early 2000s.
“This is not new,” Mayorkas said. “We have experienced migration surges before – in 2019, 2014 and before then as well.”
He also acknowledged several factors pushing people north, including poverty, violence, corruption and two damaging hurricanes which hit Honduras in November.
The measured tone from the Biden administration is a marked departure from US policy under Donald Trump, when migrants were routinely vilified. Advocates have said this tone shift is an important step in itself but they are also watching closely to see if Biden administration acts reflect its promise of “a safe, legal and orderly immigration system”.
A first test for the administration is how it processes children who make the dangerous journey to the US without adults.
After encountering border patrol agents, unaccompanied children are supposed to be moved to US health department custody within 72 hours. The health department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement attempts to place children into homes with sponsors in the US, usually close relatives, while their cases are assessed.
In recent weeks, thousands of unaccompanied children have been held in border patrol facilities beyond the three-day limit, prompting concerns for their health and welfare.
Lawyers who spoke with more than a dozen children held at a border patrol facility in Texas last week told the Associated Press some said they had been there for more than a week. Some children reported being held in packed conditions, sleeping on the floor and not being able to shower for five days, the lawyers said.
To cope with the increase, the Biden administration has opened temporary facilities to house children, deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and changed rules to move to children to the custody of a sponsor.
Mayorkas said the administration was also attempting to rebuild the immigration system after the Trump administration shrank legal pathways to the US.
“The system was gutted, facilities were closed and they cruelly expelled young children into the hands of traffickers,” Mayorkas said. “We have had to rebuild the entire system, including the policies and procedures required to administer the asylum laws that Congress passed long ago.”
Trump’s immigration policy was shaped by adviser Stephen Miller, who has endorsed white supremacist views. On his watch, the Trump administration made more than 1,000 changes to US policy, according to the Immigration Policy Tracking Project.
These changes included a March 2020 rule which effectively stopped asylum processing under coronavirus guidelines. As a result, more than 13,000 children traveling alone were expelled in the fiscal year to 30 September according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Overall, there were 197,000 expulsions in that time, a count including repeated crossings, or recidivism, which jumped from 7% in 2019 to 37% in 2020.
Biden stopped using the rule, Title 42, to block unaccompanied children from seeking asylum. But it is still being used to expel adults and families. Advocates are critical of this decision, saying the public health justification is flimsy at best, but the administration has defended the Trump-era rule.
At a White House briefing last week, the US southern border coordinator, Roberta Jacobson, spoke in Spanish and English.
“La frontera está cerrada,” she said. “The border is closed.”