Truth at the border
Biden administration is blocking the media from the crowded facilities holding minors.
The American people deserve to know what’s going on at the border. In shutting out journalists, President Joe Biden is repeating the mistakes of his predecessors, trying to control the message by limiting access instead of trusting the public.
The government has blocked the media from visiting overcrowded facilities holding an increasing number of unaccompanied minors detained at the border. With a shelter system failing to keep pace, many of the migrant children traveling alone are being held in overcrowded conditions and for far longer than what is legally allowed. This is a complicated challenge not of Biden’s making, but neither is it unprecedented or entirely unexpected. It is fully Biden’s responsibility to respond to the new arrivals in humane and effective ways. It’s early yet, but his response so far is in need of improvement.
Images released Monday by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, from a temporary Customs and Border Protection tent near McAllen show children packed into rooms with clear plastic walls, lying on thin mattresses on hard floors and covered with foil blankets.
These pictures are not flattering to the administration, but we can handle the truth. What the truth can’t handle is a lack of transparency. It not only erodes trust, but it also leaves the facts open to interpretation, spin and outright lies.
Enter U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. He and Sen. John Cornyn are traveling to the border Friday with about a dozen of their Republican colleagues. In a letter to the president, Cruz chastised the Biden administration for refusing to allow any press to accompany them.
“It is not enough for members of the Senate to see what is happening — the American people must see,” Cruz wrote.
We couldn’t agree more that the administration’s media blackout is terrible policy and worse politics. But Cruz and company headed to the border Friday must think very little of the American people if they expect their outrage to be taken at face value. Where was their fury during the previous administration’s straight-arming of the media, and by extension the public, as conditions on the border deteriorated to levels far beyond what we’re seeing this early in Biden’s tenure? Where was it? It didn’t exist.
What’s different now is that Cruz wants fodder to play the kind of divisive politics he is best known for. He cynically hopes that the images that emerge will be worth more than the thousand words that can put them into context. The better to push his narrative of an unprecedented crisis at the border created by Biden’s “radical immigration policies.”
That’s a common theme among his GOP colleagues in Washington, now, and among some Texas officials, too. Last week, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy called the arrival of migrant children a “crisis” created by Biden’s policies. That’s wrong on both fronts.
An analysis of CBP data published in the Washington Post found what has become a predictable increase that follows a seasonal upswing in undocumented immigration as winter ends and before the hot summer begins. Movement during 2020 was affected by the pandemic, but 2021 figures through February are almost a mirror image of what happened in 2019, University of California at San Diego researchers found. An analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute found similar results.
While preliminary data for March point to more of a “surge” and officials have said they expect the numbers to reach a 20-year high, those figures do not represent individual crossings, but in many cases repeated attempts by the same person. For most migrants, the border remains closed over COVID concerns, meaning that anyone detained is immediately sent back and most likely able to try to cross again. CBP estimates a 40 percent rate of recidivism.
What the president’s critics don’t want to recognize is that this has less to do with Biden — or Trump — than with desperate conditions of violence and poverty that push people to leave their home, regardless of who sits in the White House. A situation made worse last year by two hurricanes that pummeled the region and the spread of the deadly pandemic.
These are complex problems that require complex understanding and refuse easy solutions. We continue to be heartened that while Republicans are trying to score easy political points, the Biden administration seems willing to do the hard work.
It continues to expand available shelter space to move kids more quickly from Border Patrol detention, is working on alternatives that would allow asylum seekers to apply from their home countries and has sent officials to Mexico and Guatemala.
On Wednesday, Biden announced that Vice President Kamala Harris will lead efforts to curtail immigration in the short term and implement a long-term strategy to address the root causes.
To that growing list of actions we would add allowing journalists to visit and observe the situation on the border, in detention centers and inside shelters, in a way that protects and respects immigrants. Allowing NBC News to follow a recent visit by White House officials and lawmakers to a shelter facility in Texas is a step in the right direction, but more must be done to set the record straight.
Speaking at a press conference Thursday, the president promised to give the media full access, but his timeline was vague.
That’s not good enough. If Biden hopes to find a solution that has eluded past administrations, he will need the support and trust of the American people. That starts with transparency.