The U.S. government today spends about $60 million a week to house children entering the United States from Mexico. Pictured here are illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in La Joya, Texas, on April 10, 2021.
Under Republican-led pressure, President Joe Biden acknowledged for the first time that the recent surge in illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border has become a crisis.
Over the weekend in Delaware, Biden was asked by a reporter about his refugee admissions policy.
Biden responded, “We’re going to increase the number of refugees that are allowed into this country. The problem is that the refugee part is designed to address the crisis on the border, and that crisis is linked to the young people on the border.” “We can’t do two things at the same time. But now we’re going to increase that number.”
Since Biden took office, a war of words has raged around the unprecedented influx of immigrants at the U.S. southern border. Republicans have pressed Biden and White House officials to confront the situation, calling it a “crisis. Biden and others have refused to do so, preferring to call it a “challenge. Some news organizations, including The Associated Press, have told their editors and reporters not to call the influx of migrants at the southern border a “crisis.
According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP), law enforcement officials arrested 172,000 illegal aliens along the border in March of this year alone. Brandon Judd, chairman of the National Border Patrol Council, said this is “the largest influx of immigrants we’ve seen in the history of border patrol.”
Republican lawmakers and governors accused Biden of fueling the border crisis by reversing several of President Donald Trump’s orders aimed at curbing illegal immigration, including the construction of a border wall and the immigration policy known as “Remain in Mexico. The Mexican and Guatemalan governments have also accused Biden’s White House of sending ambiguous messages on immigration.
In an interview with MSNBC last week, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said in response, “I can’t make any judgments here, but I believe that the messages that have been issued in the first weeks of the Biden administration have been confusing.” “These are compassionate messages, and for people in our country, especially for the snakeheads (border smugglers), they tell the families accordingly, ‘We’ll bring the kids, the kids can get in (to the U.S.), and once they get there, the kids can call their parents. ‘”
On April 16, the Biden administration issued a memo that maintained the 15,000-strong Trump-era cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United States.
But hours later, White House press secretary Jen Psaki issued a statement reversing the administration’s order, calling it “somewhat confusing.” The statement was rushed out after left-wing members of Congress, including progressive Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, criticized the Biden administration’s decision.
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