Sermon Response to Family Crisis at Us Border
Migrant surge at edge poses political threat to Biden
The surge at the U.Due south.-Mexico border has hindered his focus on COVID-nineteen relief.
When President Joe Biden entered office, he listed what he called "four celebrated crises:" the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, a reckoning on race and climatic change.
Not amidst them was a predicament that, two months into his presidency, now poses a strong 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 Firm has been reticent to label a "crisis" -- by arguing Biden's team was unprepared for migrants' reaction to his attempts to curl dorsum former President Donald Trump's strict policies.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, has pointed fingers at Trump -- maxim his assistants exacerbated the situation past systematically ripping families apart, treating people fleeing violence and poverty with inhumanity, and neglecting or dismantling the organization set to deal with them.
"Information technology is especially challenging and difficult now, because the entire system under Us law that has been in identify throughout administrations of both parties was dismantled in its entirety by the Trump assistants," Homeland Security Secretarial assistant Alejandro Mayorkas said on ABC'southward "This Week" Sunday. "So nosotros are rebuilding the organisation every bit we address the needs of vulnerable children who get in at our borders."
Biden has taken a slew of executive actions since taking office that have taken aim at Trump's policies -- from kicking off broad-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 neb that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, among other major reforms. And, different 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 up from, Republic of honduras, Guatemala and El salvador.
Merely the White Firm has over the past month increasingly found itself on the defensive equally information technology balances its message that the border is "closed" with its stated desire to find prophylactic places for the minors who continue crossing the border unaccompanied by their parents.
"Surges tend to answer to hope, and there was a pregnant hope for a more humane policy later on iv years of, you know, pent-up demand," the White House's coordinator for the southern border, Administrator Roberta Jacobson, said earlier this month when a reporter asked her if information technology was a "coincidence" that the latest influx of people choosing to come to the The states started every bit Biden entered office.
"I don't know whether I would phone call that a coincidence," she said, "but I certainly remember that the idea that a more humane policy would be in place may have driven people to make that decision."
Anecdotally, some migrants said they have been buoyed by Biden'southward friendlier rhetoric and an impression they'll be treated more humanely than they were nether Trump.
A Brazilian man who traveled with his wife and young children to United mexican states before crossing the U.S. border told ABC News that he "definitely" would not have tried to come when Trump was president and "basically" came now because Biden had taken office.
"The main affair was the violence in my land," the man, who requested anonymity, said. "And the second thing I call back was Joe Biden. You know, it's like it lightened up my hope."
In an interview concluding week, Biden told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that his administration was working to let migrants to apply for aviary from their home countries without showtime making the arduous journeying to the United States. Trump had halted a plan that let minors do just that.
The Biden administration has kept the news media away from packed facilities forth the U.S.-Mexico border -- the White Firm has promised "transparency" while repeatedly citing wellness and privacy concerns -- although information technology has immune a series of members of Congress and senior regime officials to encounter the atmospheric condition.
And in a departure from the Trump and Obama administrations, information technology has non 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.
In 2018, the Trump administration allowed reporters into a U.S. Community and Border Protection facility in McAllen, Texas, where children were being detained in large chain-link enclosures waiting for transfer to the custody of the U.Southward. Department of Health and Human Services -- a look that frequently lasted several days or longer. Many of those children were separated from their relatives as a thing of policy and the Trump administration was severely criticized for keeping children in "cages."
Some of the commencement photographs made public nether the Biden administration from inside i of the facilities holding migrants, including families with children, came Monday from Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas. The images, which Cuellar said were taken over the weekend, showed migrants sitting in crowded, makeshift quarters inside a CBP overflow facility in Donna, Texas.
In that location are at present over 5,000 minors in CBP custody -- a record, according to people familiar with the data. By law, they are just supposed to stay in the detention-similar facilities for upward to 72 hours before being sent to live with sponsors or transferred to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services, just the department is at capacity and struggling to keep upwardly with the influx and minors are oft staying in the crowded facilities past the legal limit.
Biden himself has all the same to visit, although when a reporter asked him on Sunday if was he thinking of going, he said, "at some point, I will." He said already knew "what's going on in those facilities."
Vice President Kamala Harris, as well, was asked Monday if she planned to go.
"Not today," she said laughing, in Jacksonville, Florida, where she participated in two coronavirus-related events. "But I have before and I'm sure I will again."
For weeks, the Biden administration has been focused on promoting its $1.nine trillion COVID-19 relief package, eager to accept credit for straight payments to Americans and myriad other benefits to those suffering the economic bear upon of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden, Harris and their spouses take been traveling the country preaching about its impact.
Trump himself has criticized Biden'due south approach. On Mon he painted the aforementioned inaccurate movie that helped get him elected in 2016.
"They are violent people," Trump said in an interview with Play a trick on News. "Many of the people coming, these countries don't send out their finest and in some cases I'm sure you accept wonderful, fine people, just you also accept criminals, you have murderers, you have sex activity traffickers, you have a lot of very bad people coming into our land."
In reality, the current surge is almost entirely fabricated up of unaccompanied children, families and other migrants fleeing violence and poverty, authorities told ABC News.
They typically suffer a dangerous journey from Fundamental America, frequently with the help of human traffickers chosen "coyotes." Afterwards making it across the edge, many seek out U.S. authorities to starting time the process of claiming asylum.
While Republicans have been quick to criticize Biden, Democrats, as well, have expressed concern.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., accompanied Mayorkas during a visit to border facilities on Friday, and said he "fought back tears" when a 13-year-old girl sobbed and explained that she was "terrified" being apart from her family, including her parents in the United States.
Only, he tweeted, "the Biden Administration is trying their best to uphold the rule of law with humanity."
"They have a ton of piece of work alee to make clean up the mess Trump left them," he added, "but their intentions are truthful."
ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Cecilia Vega, Matt Gutman, Benjamin Siegel, Mike Levine, Quinn Owen and Will Steakin contributed to this study.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/border-influx-poses-political-threat-biden/story?id=76606028
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