Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday hammered the Trump administration for having “dismantled” a “system in place” under previous GOP and Democratic presidents to deal with immigrants seeking entry at the southern border.
But he insisted in several morning interviews Sunday that he’s not worried about setting a precedent on open borders by allowing thousands of unaccompanied minors to enter the country from Mexico.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mayorkas said immigration authorities are expelling families and single adults, but not children who cross the border alone.
“We will not expel orphaned children into the desert,” Mayorkas said. A major focus for the Biden administration, he said, is rebuilding “orderly systems” in Mexico and Central America to discourage would-be migrants from traveling to the U.S. border.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mayorkas vowed “we will not abandon our values and our principles. We will not abandon the needs of young children. That’s what this is all about. We are executing on our plan.”
“We are reordering the systems that the Trump administration tore down for the need for these children to take the perilous journey,” Mayorkas said. “We are investing in those countries. We are working in partnership with Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras to build processing centers in country to avoid the need for these children to take the perilous journey.”
In a separate interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” he doubled down on his message to immigrants to just not make the journey to the border at all. “The message is quite clear. Do not come. The border is closed. The border is secure. We are expelling families. We are expelling single adults under the CDC’s authority…because we are in the midst of a pandemic, and that is a public health imperative. We are encouraging children not to come. Now is not the time to come. Do not come. The journey is dangerous. We are building safe, orderly and humane ways to address the needs of vulnerable children. Do not come.”
The Biden administration has come under fire for its failure to have a plan to manage a surge of migrants in the wake of the president’s reversal of former President Donald Trump’s stringent immigration policies.
The Biden administration announced on Feb. 2 it would no longer uphold the Trump administration policy of automatically deporting unaccompanied minors seeking asylum. Two weeks later, the White House announced plans to admit 25,000 asylum-seekers to the U.S. who had been forced to remain in Mexico.
In subsequent weeks, the number of young migrants crossing without adults skyrocketed — and both Customs and Border Protection, and Health and Human Services officials have struggled to house the influx of children. Immigration officials say the number of adult migrants and families trying to enter the U.S. illegally also has surged.
Critics have pounced on public comments from Mayorkas earlier this month that the Biden administration’s message to migrants was “don’t come now” — and a slip by Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s lead adviser on the border, who said in Spanish during a recent briefing the “border is not closed,” before correcting herself.
President Joe Biden and other administration officials in recent days have stepped up efforts to urge migrants not to come. Embassies in Northern Triangle countries are airing public service announcements underscoring the dangers of making the trek north.
“They should have forecasted for space (for young migrants) more quickly,” said Ronald Vitiello, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and chief of Border Patrol who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations.
“And I think in hindsight, maybe they should have waited until they had additional shelter space before they changed the policies.”
Republicans have rallied around the issue, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., lashing out last week that “the administration can’t admit they’ve caused a crisis; they have yet to address the crisis; and House Democrats are backing policies that would only exacerbate the wrong incentive.”
More than 100,000 migrants were apprehended or turned themselves over to officials at the border in February, a 28% percent increase from January, according to CBP data.
Of those, the majority were almost immediately booted out under a public health authority Trump invoked in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic. And a chunk of those migrants, according to CBP, are repeat crossers who’ve tried multiple times to enter the country illegally.
Biden officials, including Mayorkas, acknowledge those numbers are likely to rise in March and beyond. Last week Mayorkas warned the country was “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”
Though the border is officially closed to families, in February, more than 11,000 “family units” — nearly 60% of the more than the 19,000 that were taken into custody at the border — were allowed to stay in the United States while they await their court proceedings, CBP stats show. That’s up from only 38% allowed to stay, temporarily, in January.
It isn’t the first surge of migrants arriving at the border. It happened in 2019 under Trump. It also happened in 2014 under former President Barack Obama.
“The crisis is in Washington because it’s the third administration that can’t solve it,” said Jim Darling, mayor of McAllen, Texas, told Politico. “The only thing that could stop families is legislation and actually doing the work to help Central America — and that’s not happening.”
The Association Press contributed to this report.
Source: Newmax
