The fruits of President Biden’s border policies are growing into a humanitarian crisis.
There has been a tripling of children detained at the US border and crossings are set to hit record levels.
Thee administration however, is refusing to acknowledge it has a crisis on its hands and the White House remains unprepared to answer even the most basic questions about what is going on and how they plan to handle it.
The New York Times reported that the number of unaccompanied migrant children detained along the southern US border had tripled in the last two weeks to more than 3,250. These children are filling the same Customs and Border Patrol facilities that Biden himself called “Inhumane” during his 2020 campaign, and the “overflow shelters”, opened by the Biden administration, are now almost at capacity.
Breitbart reports: On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki dodged several questions from reporters about the border crisis, refusing even to confirm the latest reports of over 3,200 unaccompanied minors detained at the border.
“I’m not going to confirm numbers from here,” Psaki said, adding the Department of Homeland Security is “not our program.”
She was also unable to say whether the Biden administration under Heath and Human Services would open more facilities to process the unaccompanied minors in detention.
“I don’t have anything to confirm for you in terms of new facilities,” she replied. “We are looking at facilities. A lot of considerations underway.”
The earlier decision to open up a facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, was condemned by the left including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), but without more facilities, more minors are kept in detention families meant for adults.
To mollify critics on the left, Psaki reassured the minors would receive educational resources, health resources, mental health resources, and legal aid.
“Humanity will always be a value from the president on down,” Psaki said Tuesday.
The White House also has an approach to blame everything but their new policies for the sudden surge at the border.
Psaki blamed prosecution, violence, economic hardship as well as two hurricanes last fall for the surge at the border and the coronavirus pandemic.
“All of this is taking place during a global pandemic that has impacted other countries’ economies, placing undue hardships on its people, just as it did in the United States,” she said.
No, Psaki repeated Tuesday, it is not a crisis, even though the number of unaccompanied children in detention is larger than under Trump when it was about 2,600.
“Look, I don’t think we need to sit here and put new labels on what we have already conveyed is challenging,” she said.
Besides, Psaki argues, the American people care about the “substantive policy” behind the Biden administration’s approach.
“That’s the information the American people are looking for, so that’s what we’re working to provide,” she said.
Niamh Harris