Joe Biden accused of fuelling migrant chaos on US-Mexico border

The US is heading for a 20-year peak in migrants crossing the Mexico border, with a surge in unaccompanied children adding to pressure on President Biden.

A Guatemalan migrant and his son cross the Rio Grande natural border between El Paso, Texas, and Mexico. Picture: AFP

The United States is heading for a 20-year peak in the number of migrants crossing the Mexican border, the homeland security secretary said yesterday, with a surge in unaccompanied children adding to the pressure on President Biden.

Alejandro Mayorkas said that more than a million people might seek a new life in the US this year. Most families and all single adults were being denied entry but new shelters for children arriving without their parents were being opened, he said. “Our goal is a safe, legal and orderly immigration system that is based on our bedrock priorities: to keep our borders secure, address the plight of children as the law requires and enable families to be together.”

Senior Republicans who travelled to the border challenged Biden to visit and view the “human heartbreak” for himself, accusing him of creating the chaos by abruptly ending several of President Trump’s hardline policies.

A group of about 30 Brazilian migrants, who had just crossed the border, sit on the ground near US Border Patrol agents. Picture: AFP

About 400 children under 18 have been arriving every day this month, bringing the total since the start of the year to 30,000, almost double the number recorded for the same period last year. The US authorities are to requisition a convention centre in Dallas to hold up to 3,000 unaccompanied teenage boys amid reports that hundreds are being given no choice but to sleep side by side on gym mats under foil sheets, unable to shower for days in overcrowded detention centres.

Biden, 78, tried to keep the focus on his dollars $US 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan yesterday with a visit to Chester, Pennsylvania, 3000 miles from the Mexican border; part of a “help is here” campaign to sell the legislation. The migrant surge has given Republicans the chance to divert attention away from the relief package windfall that is due to most Americans.

The president’s decision to admit all unaccompanied youngsters reversed a Trump-era policy requiring all asylum applicants to remain in Mexico while their cases were processed by the courts. Biden also scrapped Trump’s arrangements with Central American countries requiring asylum seekers to first make their cases to an immediate neighbouring state rather than travel to the US.

Asked yesterday on his way to Chester when he would visit the southern border, Biden said: “Not at the moment.”

His administration has blamed his predecessor for the chaos, accusing Trump of dismantling asylum systems and withdrawing funds aimed at improving conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Biden has been accused of encouraging arrivals by setting out an eight-year pathway to citizenship for illegal migrants living in the US – although a sweeping immigration reform bill containing this measure has failed to gain sufficient Democratic backing, let alone Republican support.

Trump’s tough border measures, including a ban on new asylum cases during the pandemic, led to a 53 per cent annual drop in migrants crossing the border to 400,651 last year. Numbers were generally higher than a million a year in the 1980s and 1990s and peaked at 1,643,679 in 2000.

Construction crews work on a new section of the US-Mexico border fencing in eastern Tijuana. Picture: AFP

The Republicans have pinned the blame for the border surge on the Biden administration. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, led a delegation of a dozen Republicans to the border at El Paso in Texas on Monday. “This is where you should bring Air Force One. This is where he [Biden] should look the people in the eye,” McCarthy said. “This is where he should talk to the border agents. The only way to solve it is to first admit what he has done, and if he will not reverse action it’s going to take correct congressional action to do it.”

Mayorkas said that the number of illegal crossings had been rising since April last year and put some of the blame for the overwhelmed US facilities on Mexico. “This is not new. We have experienced migration surges before – in 2019, 2014, and before then as well. Mexico’s limited capacity has strained our resources, including in the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas. When Mexico’s capacity is reached, we process the families and place them in immigration proceedings here in the United States.”

US President Joe Biden. Picture: AFP

He admitted that the US was failing to meet its own legal obligation to move children and teenagers from border detention facilities to dedicated shelters within 72 hours. They stay there until they can be placed with a host family, usually a relative or family friend.

Mayorkas said that he was restarting the Central American Minors programme ended by Trump which allowed children to make claims for US asylum in their own country rather than travel to the border. Like other Biden officials, he avoided the use of the word “crisis”, despite the deployment of the Federal Emergency Management Agency – which usually handles natural disasters – to help to care for the children.

Joe Manchin, a conservative Democratic senator, was more direct. “It’s a crisis,” he said. “Oh, it’s a crisis.”

Leecia Welch, a lawyer who visited a holding facility for migrant children in Donna, Texas, told The New York Times that it was built to house 250 but was holding about 1,000 last week. “It’s an urgent situation. These children are caught up in a crisis,” she said.

The Times