■ Senate Republicans demanded that the Biden administration restore a Trump-era border policy.

Group urges Biden to restore Trump-era policy on migration

Senate Republicans who visited the U.s.-mexico border on Friday demanded that the Biden administration restore a Trump-era policy that requires migrants who cross the frontier to go back to Mexico to file for asylum and wait there while their claims are filed.

The group, led by Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, said that any congressional action on immigration policy is unlikely until that happens. They argued that the change in direction is critical to stopping the surge of migrants, many of them unaccompanied children, that began last year and has jumped in the weeks since Biden took office.

“How can you pass an immigration bill when you have an open border,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said at a news conference in Mission, Texas, in the sweeping Rio Grande Valley.

Some senators among the nearly 20 who made the trip said they saw migrant children crammed into a nearby detention center and that there are growing concerns about the spread of COVID-19. Cruz described seeing toddlers and other young children “lying side by side, touching each other” and covered by silvery emergency blankets.

“The Biden administration wants to hide what is going on here,” said Cruz, who added that he pushed unsuccessfully to get cameras into the facility.

Lawmakers in both parties are heading to the border as the upheaval continues.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, on Friday led a small group of Democratic lawmakers in a visit to a Carrizo Spring, Texas, facility for unaccompanied minors. On Saturday, Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, also of Texas, is to lead a group of nine House lawmakers in both parties to another facility for minors in El Paso.

In the Senate, Republicans say that even a more modest measure like the Dream Act can’t clear now without a significant investment in border security or asylum law changes, or both.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-maine, called the situation at the border “a disaster.”

“I’ve always been sympathetic to both groups, particularly the Dreamers and giving them a path to citizenship,” said Collins, who was part of the Senate delegation visiting the border. “As a practical reality, given what’s happening on the border right now, I think it would have to be combined with some border security issues.”