The border is Biden’s problem now

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy took a break from reading Dr. Seuss to visit the U.S.Mexico border Monday, but he was still speaking in the simplistic terms of children’s literature. During an appearance with other lawmakers in El Paso, McCarthy, RBakersfield, attempted to brand the latest surge of migrants the “Biden border crisis.”

McCarthy was right in one respect: The border is President Biden’s problem now. His administration is struggling to handle the influx of migrants arriving there, particularly the children among them, as competently and humanely as it should. But the idea that Biden created or even exacerbated the problem is as fictitious as “Green Eggs and Ham.”

Last month, the Biden administration reversed former President Donald Trump’s policy of turning away unaccompanied children seeking asylum at the border, as migrants have a right to do under U.S. and international law. The reversal was legally and morally correct, and it should extend to adult asylum seekers. The administration is still following its predecessors’ policy of expelling adult migrants ostensibly as a means of controlling the spread of the pandemic, a dubious pretext given that the United States has consistently been one of the world’s coronavirus hot

spots.

Did Biden’s policy shift bring about the latest wave of migrants, as McCarthy and company contend? It’s certainly possible that it played a role. But the border has seen cyclical surges of unaccompanied minors since 2014, back when Biden was vice president. More than 40,000 have arrived every year since, and the number peaked at over 70,000 under the punitive and supposedly deterrent policies of the Trump administration.

The fact is that upheaval, violence, poverty and other hardships in Central

America and Mexico drive northward migration regardless of U.S. policy changes, which are communicated to prospective immigrants in unpredictable ways by smugglers and other unreliable sources. Biden has rightly sought to target what drives migration through increased investment in the countries that are home to the migrants.

That is a longterm strategy that won’t address the present influx, however. And finding a way to do that more effectively is urgent.

With thousands of children being held in inadequate, overwhelmed Border Patrol detention facilities longer than legally allowed, and thousands more in Department of Health and Human Services shelters awaiting placement with sponsors, the administration deployed Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel last week to help manage the surge. Meanwhile, immigrant advocates held a rally Monday at Mountain View’s Moffett

Field, the former military base where federal officials are considering keeping children who can’t be accommodated elsewhere.

Holding unaccompanied minors has to be distinguished from the notorious Trump administration policy that separated families, but it still results in the inherently harmful detention of children. The Biden administration must strive to keep such detentions as rare and as brief as possible.

Officials say they are doing so by easing the placement of young migrants with relatives and allowing them to apply for asylum in their home countries. Both steps required reversing some of the many Trump administration policies that blocked asylum seekers across the board instead of addressing systemic problems.

Lawmakers’ refusal to undertake comprehensive reform also perpetuates longstanding failures. Unfortunately, McCarthy and company would rather be hamming it up.