Border surge presents growing test for Biden
WASHINGTON — As migrants surge at the U.S.Mexico border, President Biden’s administration has been caught on its heels and is now scrambling to manage a humanitarian and political challenge that threatens to overshadow its ambitious agenda.
Administration officials say Biden inherited an untenable situation that resulted from what they say was President Donald Trump’s undermining and weakening of the immigration system.
But with Congress pivoting to taking up immigration legislation, images and stories from the border have begun to dominate the headlines, distracting from the White House’s efforts to promote the recently passed $1.9 trillion COVID19 relief bill.
The White House dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to four Sunday news shows in an effort to stress that it was working to gain control.
“Our message has been straightforward — the border is closed,” Mayorkas said. “We are expelling families. We are expelling single adults. And we’ve made a decision that we will not expel young, vulnerable children.”
The White House has steadfastly refused to call the situation a “crisis,” leading to a Washington battle over the appropriate description of the tense situation. Career immigration officials had warned there could be a surge after the November election and the news that Trump’s hardline policies were being reversed.
In the first days of his term, Biden acted to undo some of Trump’s measures, a rollback interpreted by some as a signal to travel to the United States. While the new administration was working on immigration legislation to address longterm problems, it didn’t have an ontheground plan to manage a surge of migrants.
“We have seen large numbers of migration in the past. We know how to address it. We have a plan. We are executing on our plan and we will succeed,” Mayorkas said. “We are rebuilding the system as we address the needs of vulnerable children who arrived at our borders.”
Biden officials have done away with the “kids in cages” imagery that defined the Trump family separation policy but have struggled with creating the needed capacity to deal with the surge. Unaccompanied children and teenagers in Customs and Border Protection custody must be transferred to the care of Health and Human Services within three days, although the minors coming now are being held for days longer.
Since Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the U.S. has seen a dramatic spike in the number of people encountered by border officials. There were 18,945 family members and 9,297 unaccompanied children encountered in February — an increase of 168% and 63%, respectively, from the month before, according to the Pew Research Center.