President Joe Biden caught everyone off guard when he appeared to admit the U.S. has a border crisis.
Well, a White House official told CNN that Biden called the situations causing migrants to flee the crisis.
Biden addressed reporters on Saturday about his decision to raise the refugee cap after initially keeping President Donald Trump’s 15,000 cap:
“We’re going to increase the number [of refugees allowed into the country]. The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people,” Biden said at the time. “We couldn’t do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number.”
But I guess that is not what Biden meant. From CNN:
On Monday, the White House sought to downplay those words, claiming Biden was referring to the conditions in Northern Triangle countries that migrants are coming from and not the surge of migrant children in US custody.”No, there is no change in position. Children coming to our border seeking refuge from violence, economic hardships and other dire circumstances is not a crisis,” a White House official told CNN.The official said that Biden “was referring to the crisis in Central America — the dire circumstances so many are fleeing from. He was not referring to the Federal Government’s response.”That official added, “The Federal Government’s response and process has been laser focused on finding solutions that allow us to address these root causes, expand capacity space and quickly transfer children to relatives. We remain focused on getting children out of CBP facilities, into proper facilities, and ultimately united with relatives or sponsors who are safe and have been vetted.”
Press Secretary Jen Psaki echoed the official’s statement:
“The President does not feel that children coming to our border seeking refuge from violence, economic hardships, and other dire circumstances is a crisis. He does feel that the crisis in Central America — the dire circumstances that many are fleeing from — that that is a situation we need to spend our time or effort on and we need to address it if we’re going to prevent more of an influx of migrants from coming in years to come,” Psaki said at the press briefing Monday.
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