U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks throughout a press rundown at the White House in Washington, March 1, 2021.
Kevin Lemarque | Reuters
Department of Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas stated Sunday that the rise in unaccompanied minors at the U.S.-Mexico border positions an extraordinary obstacle due to the fact that of actions taken under previous President Donald Trump, as critics implicate the present White House of being unprepared for a humanitarian crisis at the country’s doorstep.
“There was a system in place in both Republican and Democratic administrations that was torn down during the Trump administration, and that is why the challenge is more acute than it ever has been before,” Mayorkas stated on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Mayorkas appeared on CNN, NBC and Fox on Sunday to safeguard the administration of President Joe Biden as it deals with examination over record varieties of kids being kept in jail-like Customs and Border Protection centers, consisting of thousands beyond the 72-hour legal limitation.
The Biden administration reversed a Trump-period policy of expelling unaccompanied minors nabbed at the border, rather permitting them into the United States for processing. Republicans, Democrats and human rights activists have actually slammed the conditions under which kids are being held.
Critics have stated that the modification in policy has actually motivated unaccompanied kids to make the dangerous journey at a time when the U.S. does not have the facilities in location to appropriately look after them.
Mayorkas has actually formerly stated there is no crisis at the border, though he has actually acknowledged that the U.S. is on rate to experience more people on the southwest border than anytime in the last twenty years.
The Biden administration has actually released the Federal Emergency Management Agency to move kids rapidly into the care of the Department of Health and Human Services up until they are put with a relative in the U.S. or a sponsor as their migration cases continue.
NBC News and other media companies have actually been rejected access to the centers where the unaccompanied kids are being held. Requests for pictures inside the centers have actually likewise been rejected.
Mayorkas stated Sunday that his department would give media access to Border Patrol centers when it might do so in a safe way under Covid-19 health procedures. The Trump administration enabled media access to centers at the height of debate surrounding its kid separation policy in 2018.
After going to a border center, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., composed on Twitter on Friday that he “fought back tears” talking with a 13-year-old woman who discussed through a translator “how terrified she was, having been separated from her grandmother and without her parents.”
Mayorkas, pushed to offer a time-frame for when the federal government would have the ability to have the border scenario under control, decreased to do so. He stated that the objective was to be able to fulfill the 72-hour time frame as quickly as possible.
“I have said repeatedly, from the very outset, that a Border Patrol station is no place for a child and that is why we are working around the clock to move those children out of the Border Patrol facilities, into the care and custody of the Department of Health and Human Services that shelters them,” Mayorkas stated.
There were 5,049 unaccompanied kids in CBP custody since Saturday, NBC News reported.
Mayorkas stated that the Biden administration’s technique was more gentle than the one taken under Trump. Addressing Murphy’s tweet, Mayorkas stated that the 13-year-old woman would have been eliminated from the United States under the previous administration.
“We will not abandon our values and our principles. We will not abandon the needs of vulnerable children. That is what this is about,” Mayorkas stated.
In addition to difficulties triggered by the Trump administration, the DHS secretary likewise mentioned the Covid-19 crisis as a complicating aspect.
“We are in the midst of a pandemic and that makes the operations that much more difficult,” he stated.
On each of the 3 networks he appeared on on Sunday, Mayorkas duplicated that the border was “closed.” He informed migrants not to try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border at this time.
“We strongly urge — and the message is clear — not to do so now. I cannot overstate the perils of the journey that they take,” Mayorkas stated on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The scenario at the border is making complex a push by Democrats for bipartisan migration reform.
The House of Representatives passed 2 costs recently that would develop a course to citizenship or legal status for countless undocumented immigrants, however that legislation deals with an uphill struggle in the Senate.
A more enthusiastic thorough migration reform plan backed by the White House and presented in Congress in February appears less most likely to acquire assistance.
Mayorkas was validated by the Senate on Feb. 2 by a vote of 56-43.
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