It’s being called the “first crisis” of the Biden administration. And the irony is, it’s a crisis of the president’s own making.
DHS, the agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied minor children who show up at the border, says that as many as 117,000 children will try to enter the United States in 2021.
During the humanitarian crisis at the border in 2019, 80,000 kids crossed the border into the U.S.
The burgeoning crisis is a direct result of Joe Biden’s border policies that have ended deportation; restarted the “catch and release” program for illegals; ended the “Remain in Mexico” policy that kept asylum seekers in Mexico while awaiting their hearings; lifted several restrictions on immigrants imposed by Donald Trump due to the coronavirus; and promised a “welcoming attitude” that already has migrants massing on our southern border.
He asked for it. And he’s going to get it.
“I actually think that’s an undercount,” Victor Manjarrez, Jr., a former senior Border Patrol agent who teaches about law and human behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso, told the Washington Examiner.
Manjarrez pointed to the Biden administration’s decision to discontinue the 10-month practice of returning all unaccompanied children to Mexico rather than bringing them into U.S. custody as a leading factor for smugglers sending 2,000 children over the border each week this month. After taking office in January, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed border officials not to send any single child south of the border, choosing instead to stick along the lines of a 2007 trafficking law that protected most single children from being deported.
Right now, the government has about 8,000 beds suitable for holding children. Biden will be briefed today and advised to massively expand the number to 20,000. But it’s not just giving the kids a place to sleep. The law says that they have to have classrooms, play areas, cafeterias, counseling, and a whole host of services that the government simply isn’t equipped to handle.
DHS says they will run out of beds by the end of this month.
The administration is looking at ways to reduce the shelter populations by accelerating the release of children to sponsors already in the U.S., the sources said.
- They plan to end a Trump-era agreement between DHS and HHS that included strict sponsor vetting requirements — a practice some advocates say had a chilling effect on sponsors’ willingness to offer their homes.
- HHS has already said it would pay for transportation for children when sponsors cannot, and it has proposed removing a request for Social Security numbers from the form filled out by the potential caretakers for unaccompanied minors, as Reuters reported.
That Trump-DHS agreement was designed to stop child traffickers from getting their hands on kids. By loosening the vetting requirements, the kids will be taking their chances in going to any sponsor.
We were wondering what a “competent, compassionate government” looked like? Now, we know.
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