U.S. CALL: HEAD FOR BORDER!
Thousands of unaccompanied children are among the recent surge of migrants hitting the US-Mexico border, it was revealed Tuesday, as the Biden administration resorted to calling for volunteers to hold the line — but the White House insists the chaos is not a “crisis.”
Throngs of Central American migrants have rushed the border since President Biden’s inauguration and dismantling of the Trump administration’s more stringent immigration policies.
Over the past two weeks, the number of detained children traveling solo among that crush has more than tripled to over 3,250, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing government documents it reviewed.
That tally includes more than 1,360 kids detained for more than 72 hours, the point by which they must be transferred to shelters under law, the report said.
As they wait to be transferred to shelters, the children are being kept in small concrete rooms inside squalid, cramped Customs and Border Protection detention facilities meant for adults, the report said.
The “overwhelming” surge led Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to recently send a department-wide e-mail asking staff to volunteer to back up CBP at the border, according to Fox News.
“Today, I activated the Volunteer Force to support Customs and Border Protection as they face a surge in migration along the Southwest Border,” wrote Mayorkas, according to Fox, which obtained the e-mail.
“You have likely seen the news about the overwhelming numbers of migrants seeking access to this country along the Southwest Border,” he continued. “President Biden and I are committed to ensuring our Nation has a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system while continuing to balance all of the other critical DHS missions.”
Despite the spiraling conditions, White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to agree Tuesday with a reporter’s characterization of the situation as a “crisis.”
“I don’t think we need to sit here and put new labels on what we have already conveyed is challenging, what we have conveyed is a top priority for the president, what our policy teams are working on every single day,” Psaki said.
“We think that it’s most important to explain the substantive policy of what’s happening, what the root causes are of why these kids are coming and what we’re doing to try to solve what is a very challenging circumstance at the border,” she later added. “That’s the information the American people are looking for.”