The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi said, on Sunday that the Biden administration had inherited a broken immigration system as the administration announced it would send federal help to children on the US-Mexico border seeking asylum.
“This is a humanitarian challenge to all of us,” Pelosi told told ABC News’ This Week program. “What the administration has inherited is a broken system at the border, and they are working to correct that in the children’s interest.”
“So this, again, is a transition from what was wrong before to what is right.”
Celebration by Democrats over Joe Biden’s signature last week of a historic aid package combining Covid relief with economic stimulus and anti-poverty programs has been tempered by a surge in the number of young migrants from Central America and Mexico seeking asylum.
Some come from families whose livelihoods have been destroyed by climate change, Pelosi said. “These people were leaving because of the drought,” she said. “They couldn’t farm and they were seeking other ways to survive.”
The Biden administration, which has prioritized reversing the immigration policies of Donald Trump, announced late Saturday that it would deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), best known for responding to natural disasters, to the border, to manage and care for the children.
Fema agents would assist in the transfer of children in custody within 72 hours “into family homes or homes that are safe for them to be”, Pelosi said.
What is Joe Biden doing to cope with a rise in unaccompanied child migrants?
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A near-record 9,457 unaccompanied children were taken into US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody in February, according to the agency, the most since May 2019.
Hundreds of immigrant children and teenagers have been detained at a border patrol tent facility in packed conditions, with some sleeping on the floor because there are not enough mats, the Associated Press reported on Friday, citing non-profit lawyers who conduct oversight of immigrant detention centers.
On Sunday, in a separate appearance on CNN, Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from Texas, called the crisis “the consequence of four years of dismantling every system in place to address this with humanity and compassion”.
“What we’re seeing today is an enormous challenge,” Escobar told CNN’s State of the Union program. “And it’s unacceptable. But we also, I think, need to acknowledge that the flow of humanity arriving at our front door never stopped. The Donald Trump administration didn’t stop them.”
Fema will support a government wide effort over the next three months to safely receive, shelter and transfer minor children who arrive alone at the US south-west border, without a parent or other adult, the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Saturday.
The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to process and transfer unaccompanied minor children to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) within three days so that they can be placed with a parent already living in the United States, or other suitable sponsor, until their immigration cases can be resolved.
But more children are being held longer at border patrol facilities that were not designed with their care in mind because long-term shelters run by HHS have next to no capacity to accommodate them. Children are being apprehended daily at far higher rates than HHS can release them to parents or sponsors.
Mayorkas said Fema is working with HHS to “look at every available option to quickly expand physical capacity for appropriate lodging”.
“Our goal is to ensure that unaccompanied children are transferred to HHS as quickly as possible, consistent with legal requirements and in the best interest of the children,” Mayorkas said.
During a record influx of unaccompanied minors in 2014, the Obama administration also turned to Fema for help coordinating the governmentwide response. During that crisis, Fema helped stand up temporary shelters and processing stations on military bases.
President Joe Biden has ended the Trump-era practice of expelling immigrant children who cross the border alone, but maintained expulsions of immigrant families and single adults.
Associated Press contributed to this report
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