Washington, United States:
US President Joe Biden urged migrants not to come to the United States on Tuesday, as criticism mounted more than a surge in persons arriving at the southern border with Mexico — which includes thousands of unaccompanied youngsters.
“Yes I can say quite clearly don’t come over … Don’t leave your town or city or community,” he mentioned in an interview with ABC News, addressing the migrants.
Speaking hours right after his head of homeland safety defended the administration’s immigration policies, Biden also shrugged off claims that his dismantling of former president Donald Trump’s challenging stance had encouraged the surge, pointing out that there had been equivalent surges in 2019 and 2020.
“The idea that Joe Biden said ‘come’ – I heard the other day that they’re coming because I’m a nice guy… Here’s the deal, they’re not,” he mentioned.
On January 20, his very first day in workplace, Biden scrapped various of Donald Trump’s contentious immigration policies, which includes halting new building of a border wall and proposing legislation to develop a citizenship pathway for the almost 11 million persons living illegally in the US.
Republican critics say Biden’s policies triggered a sharp boost in migrants searching for to cross into the US illegally.
The president spoke a day right after major Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy visited the border in Texas with fellow Republican lawmakers and accused Biden of generating a “crisis.”
Migrant spikes ‘not new’
Biden’s chief of homeland safety Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday also defended the administration’s immigration policies.
Mayorkas acknowledged the United States was “on pace” to encounter more migrants at the border than at any time in two decades, but mentioned such spikes had been “not new,” obtaining also occurred in 2019, 2014 and earlier.
“The situation we are currently facing at the southwest border is a difficult one,” Mayorkas mentioned in a statement.
“We are keeping our borders secure, enforcing our laws, and staying true to our values and principles.”
Mayorkas mentioned the rise in unaccompanied youngsters — some as young as six or seven — comes from ending the policies of Trump, whose administration “cruelly expelled young children into the hands of traffickers.”
“They are vulnerable children and we have ended the prior administration’s practice of expelling them,” he mentioned.
The Biden administration continues to expel most single adults and persons traveling in households.
In February, the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) arrested about one hundred,000 persons at the southern border — which includes almost 9,500 unaccompanied youngsters — a 28 % jump more than January.
Mayorkas blasted the Trump administration for obtaining reduce help to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras meant to tackle the root causes of migration such as violence and the impacts of organic disasters.
Holding facilities for apprehended migrants are crowded, Mayorkas mentioned, noting authorities had not “had the capacity to intake the number of unaccompanied children we have been encountering.”
Complicating circumstances, pandemic-associated physical distancing protocols have additional decreased space, mentioned Mayorkas, who has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist activate more facilities.
Cuban-born Mayorkas mentioned his parents, who brought him to the US as an infant, “understood the hope and promise of America.”
“Today, young children are arriving at our border with that same hope,” he mentioned. “We can do this.”
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