Border influx poses political threat to Biden
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/border-influx-poses-political-threat-to-biden/ar-BB1eRQ40?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBnb7Kz
When President Joe Biden entered office, he listed what he called "four historic crises:" the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, a reckoning on race and climate change.
Not among them was a predicament that, two months into his presidency, now poses a potent political threat: the growing number of migrants and unaccompanied children showing up on the southern border and filling federal facilities many times over their capacity.
Republicans have seized on the influx -- which the White House has been reticent to label a "crisis" -- by arguing Biden's team was unprepared for migrants' reaction to his attempts to roll back former President Donald Trump's strict policies.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, has pointed fingers at Trump -- saying his administration exacerbated the situation by systematically ripping families apart, treating people fleeing violence and poverty with inhumanity, and neglecting or dismantling the system set up to deal with them.
"It is especially challenging and difficult now, because the entire system under United States law that has been in place throughout administrations of both parties was dismantled in its entirety by the Trump administration," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "So we are rebuilding the system as we address the needs of vulnerable children who arrive at
Biden has taken a slew of executive actions since taking office that have taken aim at Trump’s policies -- from kicking off wide-ranging reviews and halting the construction of the wall on the southern border to creating a task force aimed at reuniting migrant families separated under Trump.
He also proposed a bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, among other major reforms. And, unlike Trump, he has put more of a focus on addressing the root causes of migration from the Central American countries from which a large percentage of migrants come from, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
But the White House has over the past month increasingly found itself on the defensive as it balances its message that the border is "closed" with its stated desire to find safe places for the minors who keep crossing the border unaccompanied by their parents.
"Surges tend to respond to hope, and there was a significant hope for a more humane policy after four years of, you know, pent-up demand," the White House's coordinator for the southern border, Ambassador Roberta Jacobson, said earlier this month when a reporter asked her if it was a "coincidence" that the latest influx of people choosing to come to the United States started as Biden entered office.
"I don't know whether I would call that a coincidence," she said, "but I certainly think that the idea that a more humane policy would be in place may have driven people to make that decision."
MORE, from same article:
The Biden administration has kept the news media away from packed facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border -- the White House has promised "transparency" while repeatedly citing health and privacy concerns -- although it has allowed a series of members of Congress and senior government officials to see the conditions.
And in a departure from the Trump and Obama administrations, it has not allowed journalists to accompany U.S. Border Patrol officers on the job, preventing members of the media from speaking with migrants as they are taken into custody.
