WASHINGTON (AP) – Somehow, they didn’t see it coming.
Within weeks of the opening day, January 20, the Biden administration had reversed many of the most slandered Trump-era immigration policies, including the deportation of asylum-seeking children arriving alone at the U.S.-Mexico border and forcing migrants to wait in Mexico while defending their case to stay in the United States.
While the administration was working on immigration legislation to address long-term issues, it did not have a field plan to deal with an increase in migrants. Professional immigration officials had warned that there could be an increase after the presidential election and the news that Trump’s policies, widely considered cruel, were being reversed.
Officials now face the capacity to care for some 14,000 migrants who are now in federal custody (and are more likely to be on the way) and the administration is up to the task in the face of criticism. who should have been better prepared to deal with a predictable situation.
“They should have predicted the space (for young migrants) more quickly,” said Ronald Vitiello, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Control and head of the border patrol that has served in Republican and Democratic administrations. “And I think, in retrospect, maybe they should have waited until they had an additional refuge before they changed policies.”
The situation on the southern border is complex.
Since Biden took office, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people found by border officials. In February, 18,945 family members and 9,297 unaccompanied children were found, an increase of 168% and 63%, respectively, from the previous month, according to the Pew Research Center. This creates a huge logistical challenge because children, in particular, require higher levels of care and coordination between agencies.
However, meetings of unaccompanied minors and families are lower than at various points in the Trump administration, including the spring of 2019. That May, authorities found more than 55,000 migrant children, including 11,500 unaccompanied minors, and about 84,500 migrants traveling to family units.
Professional immigration officials, overwhelmed by previous rises, have long warned that the flow of migrants to the border could increase again.
Migrant children are sent from border cells to other government facilities until they are released to a sponsor. This process slowed considerably with the Trump administration’s policy of “enhanced verification,” in which details were sent to immigration officials and some sponsors ended up being arrested, prompting some to fear picking up children for worries of being deported. Biden has reversed that policy, so immigration officials hope the process will speed up now.
Officials in the Biden administration have repeatedly blamed the current situation on the previous administration, arguing that Biden inherited a mess resulting from the mining and weakening of President Donald Trump’s immigration system.
The White House also points to Biden’s decision to deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known for helping communities after a natural disaster, to support efforts to prosecute the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children. arriving at the border.
Biden and others have dismissed the idea that what is happening now is a “crisis.”
“I think next month we’ll have enough of those beds to take care of those kids who have nowhere to go,” Biden said in a recent interview with ABC News when asked if his administration it should have anticipated the rise of unaccompanied migrants, as well as families and adults. He added: “But, let’s put something serious into it. The vast majority of people who cross the border are sent … they are sent again immediately ”.
Adam Isacson, an analyst with the Washington Office in Latin America’s human rights advocacy group, said Republicans’ insistence that there is a “crisis” on the border is excessive, but that the increase in migrants was predictable.
He called it a perfect storm of factors: hurricanes that hit Central America last fall; the economic consequences caused by the coronavirus pandemic; typical patterns of seasonal migration; the thousands of Central American immigrants already trapped at the border for months; and the persistent scourge of gang violence affecting the countries of the Northern Triangle: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Isacson said the Biden administration could have been “two or three weeks” slow in preparing for the rise of unaccompanied young migrants and the subsequent housing crisis after announcing early February he would stop deporting unaccompanied youth.
But Isacson added that the bottleneck was also affected by the Trump administration’s lack of cooperation with the Biden transition.
The Biden administration announced on February 2 that it would stop maintaining the Trump administration’s policy of automatically deporting unaccompanied minors seeking asylum. Two weeks later, the White House announced its plans to admit 25,000 asylum seekers to the U.S. who had been forced to remain in Mexico.
In the following weeks, the number of young migrants crossing without adults skyrocketed. Both Customs and Border Protection officials and Health and Human Services officials have struggled to accommodate the influx of children. Immigration officials say the number of adult immigrants and families trying to enter the U.S. illegally has also increased.
Border patrol officials had met with more than 29,000 unaccompanied minors since Oct. 1, nearly the same number of youths who were detained throughout the previous budget year, officials at the border said. administration.
“It is critical to increase the capacity to deal with unaccompanied minors, but the figures do not point to any crisis,” Isacson said.
That hasn’t stopped Republicans – including Trump and Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy from California – from sinking in Biden.
“It’s more than a crisis. That’s human discouragement, ”said McCarthy, who led a delegation of a dozen fellow Republicans from the House to El Paso, Texas on Monday.
Biden also faces criticism from Republicans because his administration has sent mixed messages.
Critics have focused on public comments from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who earlier this month said the administration’s message to migrants “doesn’t arrive now” and a receipt from Roberta Jacobson, l ‘main adviser at the White House border, who told Espanyol during a recent briefing, “the border is not closed,” before correcting herself.
In recent days, the president and other government officials have stepped up efforts to urge migrants not to come. The embassies of the countries of the Northern Triangle issue public service announcements that underline the dangers of making the journey north.
Eric Hershberg, director of the Center for Latin American and Latin Studies at American University, said Biden’s team faces a powerful counter-narrative as it tries to convince desperate Central Americans to stay at peace: talks at the social networks of migrants who successfully reached the world. borders and smugglers who insist that now is the ideal time.
Hershberg quotes a Honduran friend’s reaction to U.S. warnings that migrants could face danger during the trip: “You know, you don’t have to go with so much uncertainty. You can stay here and know that they will be raped or killed “.