On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas reiterated that the U.S. doesn’t have a border crisis. Press Secretary Jen Psaki doubled down on his claim.
It looks the DHS will tell President Joe Biden the opposite. Officials expect 117,000 unaccompanied children at the border this year, but the administration will likely run out of resources by the end of March.
Axios learned the DHS briefing includes the need for 20,000 beds:
Between the lines: DHS currently projects there will be 117,000 unaccompanied child migrants crossing the border this year, according to information on the slides.
A large number of them are teenagers. Just last month, some 6,000 migrants aged 16 and 17 were caught, according to the slides.
HHS [Health and Human Services] is expected to reach its shelter capacity later this month, according to the two sources.
The U.S. took in 68,000 unescorted children in 2014. About 80,000 crossed the border in 2019. Experts think the administration should expect more than 117,000:
“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.
HHS has new guidelines to help get children out of the centers as soon as possible:
Let’s look at the second bullet point. Supposed children advocates hated President Donald Trump’s administration for imposing the rule because it kept kids in centers longer than necessary:
The proposal was just “another way that the Trump administration was trying to frustrate the reunification process,” said Jennifer Podkul from the nonprofit Kids in Need of Defense, which provides legal representation for children.
I thought people like Podkul cared about children. She wants the government to hand off kids to just anyone? In what universe is that okay?
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