WASHINGTON (AP) – Somehow they didn’t see it coming.
Within weeks of the inauguration day on January 20, the Biden administration had been rolled back many of the most maligned Trump-era immigration policiesincluding deporting asylum-seeking children who arrived alone at the US-Mexico border and forcing migrants to wait in Mexico while they made their case to stay in the United States.
While the government was working on immigration laws to address long-term problems, it had no concrete plan to manage a flow of migrants. Career immigration officials had warned there could be a wave after the presidential election and news that Trump policies, widely considered cruel, were being reversed.
Now officials are building capacity to care for some 14,000 migrants now in federal custody – and likely on the way – and the government is on the back of criticism that it should have been better prepared to face a predictable predicament.
“They should have predicted space (for young migrants) faster,” 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 in hindsight, I think they should have waited until they had extra shelter before changing the policy.”
The situation on the southern border is complex.
Since Biden’s inauguration, the US has seen a dramatic spike in the number of people encountering border officials. There were 18,945 family members and 9,297 unaccompanied children in February – a 168% and 63% increase from the previous month, respectively, according to the Pew Research Center. This creates an enormous logistical challenge, because children in particular need higher standards of care and coordination between institutions.
Yet encounters of both unaccompanied minors and families are lower than at various times during the Trump administration, including in the spring of 2019. In May, authorities encountered more than 55,000 migrant children, including 11,500 unaccompanied minors, and approximately 84,500 migrants who traveled in. family units.
Career Immigration Officers, overwhelmed by the earlier peaks, have long warned that the flow of migrants to the border could increase again.
Migrant children are sent from border detention cells to other government facilities until released to a sponsor. That process was significantly delayed by a Trump administration policy of “enhanced vetting,” sending details to immigration officials and arresting some sponsors, leading some to fear picking up children for fear of deportation. Biden has reversed that policy, so immigration officials hope the process will speed up now.
Biden government officials have repeatedly blamed the current situation on the previous administration, arguing that Biden inherited a mess as a result of President Donald Trump’s undermining and weakening of the immigration system.
The White House also notes Biden’s decision to deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known for helping communities in the aftermath of a natural disaster, to support efforts to address the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children. arrive at the border.
Biden and others have pushed back the idea that what is happening now is a “crisis.”
“We will, I think, next month have enough of those beds to take care of these kids who have nowhere to go,” Biden said in a recent interview with ABC News, when asked if his administration should have anticipated the increase in young children. unaccompanied migrants, as well as families and adults. He added, “But let’s get it straight. The vast majority of people who cross the border are sent back … immediately sent back. “
Adam Isacson, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America human rights organization, said that while Republicans’ insistence that a “crisis” has been spanned at the border, the increase in migrants has been predictable.
He called it a perfect storm of factors: hurricanes that hit Central America last fall; the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic; typical seasonal migration patterns; the thousands of Central American migrants who have been trapped at the border for months; and the ongoing plague of gang violence in the countries of the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Isacson said the Biden administration had been slow for perhaps “two or three weeks” in preparing for the surge in unaccompanied young migrants and the ensuing housing crisis, after announcing in early February that it would stop deporting unaccompanied youth.
But Isacson added that the bottleneck was also affected by the Trump administration’s lack of cooperation in the Biden transition.
The Biden administration announced on Feb. 2 that it would no longer enforce the Trump administration’s policy of automatically expelling unaccompanied minors who apply for asylum. Two weeks later, the White House announced plans to admit 25,000 asylum seekers to the US who were forced to remain in Mexico.
In the following weeks, the number of young migrants crossing without adults increased. Customs and border guards as well as health and personnel services are struggling to accommodate the influx of children. According to immigration officials, the number of adult migrants and families trying to enter the US illegally has also increased.
Border guard officials had encountered more than 29,000 unaccompanied minors since Oct. 1, nearly the same number of youth detained throughout the previous budget year, officials say.
“Building capacity to deal with unaccompanied minors is critical, but the numbers do not indicate a crisis,” said Isacson.
That hasn’t stopped Republicans – including Trump and California Republican leader Kevin McCarthy – from pillorying Biden.
“It’s more than a crisis. This is a human grief, ”said McCarthy, who led a delegation of a dozen House Republicans to El Paso, Texas on Monday.
Biden has also been criticized by Republicans for sending mixed messages from his administration.
Critics have focused on public comments from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who earlier this month said the government’s message to migrants was “Don’t come now” and a slip by Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s chief adviser to the border, who said in Spanish at a recent briefing ‘the border is not closed’, before correcting herself.
The president and other government officials have stepped up efforts in recent days to urge migrants not to come. Embassies in the Northern Triangle countries broadcast public service announcements highlighting the dangers of the journey north.
Eric Hershberg, director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, said Biden’s team faces a powerful counter-narrative as it tries to convince desperate Central Americans to stay put: social media chatter from migrants who have made it all over the world. border and smugglers who insist that this is the ideal time.
Hershberg quotes a Honduran friend’s response to US warnings that migrants could be at risk along the way: “You know, you don’t have to go with such uncertainty. You can just stay here and know that you will be raped or murdered. “