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      'Blindsided': Biden faces tough test in reversing Trump's cruel border legacy

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      Lauded for his human touch, Joe Biden is facing an early political and moral test over how his government treats thousands of migrant children who make the dangerous journey to America alone.

      Officials say the number of people caught attempting to cross the US-Mexico border is on pace to hit its highest number for 20 years. Single adults and families are being expelled under coronavirus safety rules inherited from Donald Trump.
      But a growing number of children, some as young as six years old, from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are arriving at the southern border without parents or guardians. These minors are brought to border patrol facilities – where many languish in cramped, prison-like conditions for days on end.
      The fast-developing humanitarian emergency shows how Biden’s determination to break from Trump’s harsh, nativist crackdown in favour of a more compassionate approach has collided with the reality of finite resources and a broken system.
      “I do think that they were blindsided by this surge,” said María Teresa Kumar, founding president of the grassroots political organisation Voto Latino. “As someone that monitored this a lot, I didn’t see that coming and I don’t think the community saw that coming. It took everybody by surprise.
      “It is heart-wrenching knowing that there are children that are cold and don’t have family. It’s one of these cases where there seems to be no right answers. Knowing the people inside the administration are very much on the side of immigrants speaks to me that there are real moral dilemmas happening right now and I would not want to be in that position.”

      Democrats have called the situation a “challenge” and “problem” and blamed Trump’s legacy. Republicans have rushed to brand it the first “crisis” and “disaster” of Biden’s presidency. The battle is proof that border access remains one of the most complex, emotive and radioactive issues in American politics.
      Trump launched his campaign for the presidency by promising to build a wall, routinely vilified migrants and, ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, spoke often of an “invasion”. Biden stopped construction of the wall and promised to unwind Trump’s zero-tolerance policies.
      The number of “encounters” between migrants and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has increased every month since April 2020. But when 100,441 migrants were reported attempting to cross the border last month, it was the highest level since March 2019 and included a particular rise in unaccompanied children.
      Many such children head to the US to reunite with family members or escape poverty, crime and violence. Central America has been hit by hurricanes and the economic fallout of Covid-19. In an ABC interview this week, Biden denied that more migrants were coming because he is “a nice guy”, insisting: “They come because their circumstance is so bad.”
      Under Trump, unaccompanied children were sent straight back to Mexico. Biden decided they should go to a border patrol facility and, within 72 hours, be transferred to the health department with a view to being placed with a family member or sponsor.
      However, it has quickly become clear the system is not fit for purpose, leaving about 4,500 children stuck in facilities designed for adult men. Lawyers who visited one facility in Texas described seeing children sleeping on the floor or on metal benches and being allowed outside for a few minutes every few days.
      The administration is scrambling to find more capacity, opening emergency shelters and using a convention centre in Dallas to house up to 3,000 teenage boys. It also deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which typically responds to floods, storms and other disasters, to help shelter and transport children at least until early June.
      Republicans seized on that move as evidence a disaster is unfolding. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, led a delegation of a dozen Republicans to El Paso, Texas, and spoke of “the Biden border crisis”, adding: “It’s more than a crisis. This is human heartbreak.”
      The message has resounded through a conservative media that finds Biden an elusive target. Trump made wildly exaggerated claims in a Fox News interview: “They’re destroying our country. People are coming in by the hundreds of thousands, And, frankly, our country can’t handle it. It is a crisis like we have rarely had and, certainly, we have never had on the border.”
      For Republicans, reeling from election defeat, internal divisions and failure to block Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, the border offers a political lifeline.
      Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “If the numbers go down next month this isn’t a crisis, but I think what they are expecting is that they’re not going to go down and that this is going to be something that will be an enduring and endemic problem.
      “It’s something that energises and unites the Trump voting coalition and could easily be seen as a failure on behalf of the administration by just enough of the people who voted for him but aren’t hardcore Democrats. So I think it’s a very smart move by Republicans to play this out and Biden needs to figure out how you can be compassionate while not being naively welcoming. He has not yet figured out how to do that.”

      Others, however, regard the Republican response as predictable ploy by a party obsessed with demonising migrants. Kumar said: “They’re phonies and it is coldly calculated because they know they have problems with suburban white women voters, and they are trying to make a case for it for the midterms.
      “It’s cynical and gross because when children were literally dying at the border, when they had a president that was teargassing refugees, not one of them stood up. It’s callous and cold political expediency and it’s shameful.”
      The White House has pointed out that the Trump administration forcibly separated nearly 3,000 children from parents, with no system in place to reunite them. Alejandro Mayorkas, the first migrant and first Latino in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress: “A crisis is when a nation is willing to rip a nine-year-old child out of the hands of his or her parent and separate that family to deter future migration. That, to me, is a humanitarian crisis.”
      Mayorkas argues that Trump’s decision to cut staffing, bed capacity and other resources was reckless given the likelihood that the number of migrants would rise again as the pandemic waned.
      “The system was gutted,” he said, “facilities were closed and they cruelly expelled young children into the hands of traffickers. We have had to rebuild the entire system, including the policies and procedures required to administer the asylum laws that Congress passed long ago.” More

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      Is there a crisis at the border?: a look at both sides of the immigration argument

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      Along the winding road which follows the Rio Grande west from Mission, Texas, dozens of armed border patrol agents, state troopers, soldiers, and state and local police are dotted about to catch undocumented migrants entering the country from Mexico.This is a so-called hotspot for irregular migration – folks crossing the border river without permission to enter the US – in what the Republican party and anti-immigrant activists are calling a crisis at the border. During one afternoon this week, there were more law enforcement vehicles cruising along this dusty 15-mile stretch towards Los Ebanos, a tiny border community connected to Mexico by a hand operated cable ferry, than there was local traffic.For a couple of hours nothing much happens, until agents chase down a group – six men, and one woman – trying to hide in the dry vegetation.They are handcuffed and processed on the side of the road, each giving their name, age and country of origin to a bilingual border patrol agent, before placing personal belongings – wallet, jewellery and phone – into individual plastic bags. The sun is piercing; the migrants look exhausted.Christian, a lanky 20-year-old from Santa Bárbara,Honduras, seems utterly bewildered by what’s just gone down. His family’s crops were destroyed last November when two deadly hurricanes – Eta and Iota – struck within two weeks of each other. The land was flooded for two months, leaving them no harvest and unable to prepare for next season. “There are no jobs, and we have no money or food,” he said, shaking his head.Christian is among a rapidly rising number of climate refugees from Central America – one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to the impacts of global heating.Emerson, 25, a member of the indigenous Maya Q’eqchi community from Puerto Barrios in Izabal, Guatemala, left behind his wife and two young daughters, hoping to find work. “I’m a machinery mechanic, but the work went down with the pandemic and then things got much worse with Hurricane Eta.”Ingrid, one of two Salvadorans, said she’s 18 but looks much younger. She’s wearing two plastic wristbands – one red, the other white – which reports suggest are used by coyotes (smugglers or guides) to indicate payments had been made to organized crime groups who control the border.Ingrid lived with her uncle in Ilopango, a sprawling town on the outskirts of the Salvadoran capital with high levels of gang violence and police brutality, but said she’d come looking for work and a better life after the pandemic left them struggling to make ends meet. Covid has deepened poverty and hunger across Central America and Mexico, and governments have failed to provide adequate, if any, relief.The migrants were given disposable face masks before being searched and loaded into a green and white border patrol van. They will be expelled; some of them will undoubtedly try to cross again.The border patrol agents won’t answer any questions, but one said to his colleagues: “This is a good day’s work.” Another said he hoped we would give them good publicity.After four years of racist, chaotic, anti-immigration policies by the Trump administration – as well as growing desperation fuelled by the pandemic and extreme climate events – the number of people seeking to enter the US is rising.But advocates in the Rio Grande Valley, where undocumented migrants have long been relied upon for cheap farm labour, reject incendiary claims that the numbers are overwhelming.“Migration goes up and down, that’s the reality of the border. Biden has different values and has given people hope, but there’s no border crisis, to say so is political manipulation,” said Ramona Casas, director of the migrant advocacy group Arise. “We need to address the root causes and transform the broken immigration system, not more militarization.”The current uptick started before Biden’s election, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures.Jenn Budd, a former senior border patrol agent turned whistleblower, said: “The only crisis at the border is the children, which the administration is trying to deal with, anything else is simply not true and an attempt to play politics, make Biden look bad and ensure the money keeps flowing to the border security industry.”In 2000, a total of 9,212 border patrol agents detained an average of almost 137,000 undocumented migrants per month on the southern border. In the 2021 fiscal year until February, the average was just over 76,000 per month, but the number of agents is more than double compared to 2000.Earlier this month, the Texas governor Greg Abbott deployed state troopers and the national guard to the border after claiming, without evidence, that illegal immigrants were spreading the coronavirus.“The Biden administration is recklessly releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants who have Covid into Texas communities,” said Abbott in a tweet on 3 March.But illegal or undocumented migrants are not being released into the US. The two groups being allowed in are some existing asylum seekers, thanks to the repeal of Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, and some new arrivals presenting at legal ports of entry, including unaccompanied children and young families, who have been permitted to remain in the country pending asylum court hearings. In Texas, everyone else continues to be turned back, say advocates.Abbott’s unsubstantiated Covid claims came shortly after he announced plans to end the state mask mandate and ordered businesses to reopen at 100% capacity. Texas has one of the slowest vaccination rates in the country. The White House has called out Abbott for refusing federal funds to pay for Covid mitigation measures for migrants.Last week, speaking at a press conference in Mission, Abbott said he’d seen people crossing the river illegally during an aerial tour of the area. “There is a crisis on the Texas border right now with the overwhelming number of people who are coming across the border. This crisis is a result of President Biden’s open border policies,” he said.A couple of days later CNN and Breitbart reported a story after coming across an alleged human trafficking incident within minutes of setting off on the river, from a launchpad behind the wall south-east of Mission where access is controlled by border patrol, which multiple advocates claim was staged to fuel rightwing propaganda.In the video, a man wearing a black balaclava is seen bringing a handful of migrants wearing facemasks and life vests across the river in a raft, with scores more lined up on the Mexican side, waiting to cross. The so-called smuggler then sets off to bring over another load.In general, smugglers try to blend in and so do not cover their faces, in order to pass off as a migrant and avoid trafficking charges if caught. The Guardian travelled 20 miles along the river, which is full of sensors, cameras, and other tracking devices, as well as regular patrols on the levy and river, making it unlikely that such a large group of people could go undetected. The Guardian did not see any people crossing the river.In downtown McAllen, the biggest city in the Rio Grande Valley, a young female volunteer gripping a clipboard leads a small group of Central American families from the Covid rapid testing site to the Catholic Charities respite center where they can shower, rest, make phone calls and eat a modest meal before heading to be with relatives with whom they should stay until their asylum case is ruled on by an immigration court.CBP has released a hundred or more new arrivals every day – all families with children under the age of six seeking asylum at a port of entry – for the past few weeks compared to just a handful before Biden took office.The largest Rio Grande Valley detention center is closed for remodeling, which along with Covid restrictions has reduced capacity and partially explains the transfer of unaccompanied children to other sectors and the release of families into the care of relatives.The rise is significant but manageable, according to Norma Pimentel, director of the respite center.On arrival, the exhausted families are ushered into large white tents erected opposite the bustling bus terminal, where everyone is tested for Covid – a service run by local health officials. Anyone who tests positive must quarantine in a local hotel for two weeks.“There’s a pandemic, so of course some migrants will have Covid, that’s why we’re testing them to keep everyone safe. If the governor cares about the community, why did he refuse federal funds? He’s not interested in solving the problem, he’d rather spend money militarizing our communities and creating an illusion of war,” said Pimentel. “Everyone should be given a fair chance to claim asylum safely, but we need to address the root causes, we will never fix this at the border.”CBP did not respond to questions. As the partisan finger pointing intensifies, desperate people try to change their lives.On a bench in front of the respite center, Alicia Barrios, 31, from Guatemala City, cannot hold back the tears. Barrios, who is seven months pregnant, arrived at the border last week with her husband Nelson Gonzales, 27, and four-year-old daughter Brittany, after a gruelling, four-week overland journey through Mexico. Both have lost weight, and Barrios recalls long nights sleeping in the open air, comforting her daughter as she cried because she was hungry and cold.In Guatemala, they barely had enough to eat over the past year as the economy collapsed and a strict curfew made many odd jobs impossible; Barrios hasn’t had any antenatal care as the hospitals are overwhelmed. She’s waiting for her brother in Houston to send them bus fare, and doesn’t yet understand the lengthy legal process which lies ahead.“The journey was very hard, but we don’t want our children to suffer like we did. I’m so grateful that we made it.” More

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      US House passes bill that would give Dreamers a path to citizenship

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would give undocumented immigrants, including “Dreamers”, a pathway to citizenship. The House on Thursday voted 228 to 197, largely along party lines, to set up a legal pathway to citizenship for Dreamers – people who came to the US as undocumented minors and who received temporary protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program.The bill, called the American Dream and Promise Act of 2021, would also grant green cards for many immigrants who have fled war or natural disasters and are residing in the US with a temporary protected status. In all, it could make 4.4 million people eligible for permanent residence in the US, according to the Migration Policy Institute.Nine Republicans joined Democrats in support of the measure.Representatives also voted 247-174 Thursday on a second bill, which would grant legal status for undocumented farmworkers. Both measures passed in 2019, as well, with some Republican support – but the measures are likely to join a growing list of legislation that will hit a wall in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans have vowed to block proposals with the filibuster.The measures are among several attempts by Democrats to reverse Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies. They also coincide with Joe Biden’s efforts to address the number of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border, many of whom are fleeing dangerous conditions in Central America.The Dreamer bill would grant conditional legal status for 10 years to many undocumented immigrants who were brought into the US as children. During Thursday’s debate, the Democratic representative Pramila Jayapal noted she had come from India to the US alone at the age of 16, saying: “Let’s stop the hypocrisy of criminalizing immigrants.”Immigrant rights groups celebrated the news of its passage. “This is a result of years of organizing and pressure from the immigrant rights movement, but we’ll continue to hold our celebration until the very end,” tweeted the advocacy group Raices.As president, Trump rescinded the Obama-era Daca program, which offered temporary protection from deportation to Dreamers. However, the supreme court ruled in 2020 that Trump’s move had been unlawful.The Biden White House backed both bills. But it also urged lawmakers to adopt broader reforms in Biden’s sweeping immigration bill introduced last month, saying this would secure the border and “address the root causes of instability and unsafe conditions causing migration from Central America”.“We can’t keep waiting,” Biden wrote on Twitter. “I urge Congress to come together to find long term solutions to our entire immigration system so we can create a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system, tackle the root causes of migration and legalize the undocumented population in the United States.”Biden’s wide-ranging plan would provide a path to US citizenship to the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. But the Senate’s No 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, said this week that goal does not have enough support in the House or Senate.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, panned the House efforts on Thursday, saying they would exacerbate problems at the border, further dimming prospects in that chamber, where a supermajority of at least 60 of 100 members are needed for most legislation to advance.And even if the Dreamers bill were to pass the Senate, it would still have limitations, including provisions around criminal history that could bar some young immigrants from legal status if they have committed a misdemeanor. It also gives the Department of Homeland Security discretion over which youths can be excluded from the path to citizenship, based on alleged gang affiliation or dispositions in juvenile court.Human Rights Watch and other groups have written to Democratic legislators asking them to strike provisions that would bar young immigrants who have been criminalized from becoming citizens.“If we learned anything in 2020, it’s that the policing and mass incarceration systems in this country are fundamentally rigged against Black and Latinx people,” said Jacinta González, the senior campaign organizer for the advocacy group Mijente, who criticised the bill for being “designed to strip access to Biden’s promise of immigration reform from people who have experienced police contact. Criminalization born of a racist system cannot be the measure by which we determine who belongs and who goes.” More

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      Biden tells migrants 'don't come over' US border as he tackles inherited 'mess'

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      Joe Biden told immigrants making the difficult journey to the US-Mexico border “don’t come over” as the administration attempts to respond to an increase of unaccompanied children seeking asylum.In a wide-ranging interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, aired in full on Wednesday morning, the US president also discussed vaccines, Vladimir Putin and the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo.Biden said his plan for the immediate issue of children needing safety at the border was to increase the number of beds available and speed up the process of placing children with sponsors in the US while their legal cases play out.“We will have, I believe by next month, enough of those beds to take care of these children who have no place to go,” Biden said.In the interview Biden was also critical of the existing process for migrants. “You have to try and get control of the mess that was inherited,” Biden said.Longer-term, Biden said his plan for the border included creating programs to address the factors driving people from their home countries – including violence, poverty, corruption and the climate crisis – and to allow children to apply for asylum from those countries, instead of at the border. “They come because their circumstance is so bad,” Biden said.But he emphasized that the US was still blocking most asylum-seeking adults and many families from pursuing their claims at the border. “I can say quite clearly: don’t come over,” Biden said.Stephanopoulos also pressed Biden on his vaccine plan, asking when things would return to normal. Biden said his previously stated goal of getting things close to normal by the Fourth of July holiday wouldn’t happen unless people wear masks, socially distance and wash their hands.Biden also said he was surprised that the conversation about vaccines had been politicized.“I honest to God thought we had it out,” Biden said. “I honest to God thought that, once we guaranteed we had enough vaccine for everybody, things would start to calm down. Well, they have calmed down a great deal. But I don’t quite understand – you know – I just don’t understand this sort of macho thing about, ‘I’m not gonna get the vaccine. I have a right as an American, my freedom to not do it.’ Well, why don’t you be a patriot? Protect other people.”Biden said that since being vaccinated, he has been able to hug his grandchildren and see them in his home.The pair also discussed Biden’s foreign policy plans and the president said he was currently reviewing the deal made by Donald Trump with the Taliban to have the US pull its troops from Afghanistan by 1 May.“I’m in the process of making that decision now as to when they’ll leave,” Biden said. “The fact is that, that was not a very solidly negotiated deal that the president – the former president – worked out. And so we’re in consultation with our allies as well as the government, and that decision’s going to be – it’s in process now.”Biden said it would be “tough” for all service members to leave by the May deadline.“It could happen,” he said, “but it is tough.”Stephanopoulos asked Biden if the Russian president would “pay” after the US chief intelligence office found that Putin had overseen efforts aimed at “denigrating” Biden’s candidacy in the 2020 presidential election.“He will pay a price,” Biden said, noting that the two leaders had spoken in January about Putin’s election meddling.“The conversation started off, I said, ‘I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared.’”Stephanopoulos asked: “So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he’s a killer?”“Mmm hmm, I do,” Biden replied.Biden was also asked about US leaders, including the allegations that Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed several women. The state attorney general is investigating the claims and several prominent New York politicians have called for the Democratic governor to step down.Stephanopoulos asked Biden: “If the investigation confirms the claims of the women, should he resign?”“Yes,” Biden replied. “I think he’ll probably end up being prosecuted, too.”The interview concluded with Stephanopoulos asking Biden about his dog, Major, who the White House recently announced had caused “a minor injury” to someone on the property. After, Major was brought to the Biden home in Delaware, where he is now being trained.Biden said Major did not bite someone and break their skin and only went to the Delaware home because he and his wife, Jill Biden, were going to be away for a few days. The new environment of the White House startled Major, Biden said.“You turn a corner, and there’s two people you don’t know at all,” Biden said. “And he moves to protect. But he’s a sweet dog. Eighty-five per cent of the people there love him. He just – all he does is lick them and wag his tail.” More

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      ‘The border is closed’: US deters adults but allows processing for child migrants

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      Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary said on Tuesday that even as the US processes a growing number of unaccompanied child migrants at the US-Mexico border, the country remains closed to most asylum seekers.“Now is not the time to come to the border,” Alejandro Mayorkas said.US border patrol officials encountered more than 15,000 children traveling without adults in January and February and officials have warned the numbers continue to grow in the first weeks of March. The arrivals threaten to overwhelm stretched federal agencies, putting children at risk, though Mayorkas told ABC News it was a challenge his department could handle.“What we are doing is addressing young children who come to the border to make claims under the humanitarian laws established years and years ago and we are building capacity to address the needs of children when they arrive,” Mayorkas said. “But we are also, and critically, sending an important message that now is not the time to come to the border.”Mayorkas said the border was not permanently closed to adults and families, but urged people to wait before approaching it.“Give us the time to rebuild the system that was entirely dismantled in the prior administration,” he said.The secretary also issued a lengthy statement, warning that the US was on pace to encounter more individuals at the border with Mexico than it had in the past 20 years.His projection did not reflect a record number of people crossing the border, however, because it only included people apprehended by US border patrol – not those who cross without getting caught. That group has shrunk dramatically since the early 2000s.“This is not new,” Mayorkas said. “We have experienced migration surges before – in 2019, 2014 and before then as well.”He also acknowledged several factors pushing people north, including poverty, violence, corruption and two damaging hurricanes which hit Honduras in November.The measured tone from the Biden administration is a marked departure from US policy under Donald Trump, when migrants were routinely vilified. Advocates have said this tone shift is an important step in itself but they are also watching closely to see if Biden administration acts reflect its promise of “a safe, legal and orderly immigration system”.A first test for the administration is how it processes children who make the dangerous journey to the US without adults.After encountering border patrol agents, unaccompanied children are supposed to be moved to US health department custody within 72 hours. The health department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement attempts to place children into homes with sponsors in the US, usually close relatives, while their cases are assessed.In recent weeks, thousands of unaccompanied children have been held in border patrol facilities beyond the three-day limit, prompting concerns for their health and welfare.Lawyers who spoke with more than a dozen children held at a border patrol facility in Texas last week told the Associated Press some said they had been there for more than a week. Some children reported being held in packed conditions, sleeping on the floor and not being able to shower for five days, the lawyers said.To cope with the increase, the Biden administration has opened temporary facilities to house children, deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and changed rules to move to children to the custody of a sponsor.Mayorkas said the administration was also attempting to rebuild the immigration system after the Trump administration shrank legal pathways to the US.“The system was gutted, facilities were closed and they cruelly expelled young children into the hands of traffickers,” Mayorkas said. “We have had to rebuild the entire system, including the policies and procedures required to administer the asylum laws that Congress passed long ago.”Trump’s immigration policy was shaped by adviser Stephen Miller, who has endorsed white supremacist views. On his watch, the Trump administration made more than 1,000 changes to US policy, according to the Immigration Policy Tracking Project.These changes included a March 2020 rule which effectively stopped asylum processing under coronavirus guidelines. As a result, more than 13,000 children traveling alone were expelled in the fiscal year to 30 September according to the American Civil Liberties Union.Overall, there were 197,000 expulsions in that time, a count including repeated crossings, or recidivism, which jumped from 7% in 2019 to 37% in 2020.Biden stopped using the rule, Title 42, to block unaccompanied children from seeking asylum. But it is still being used to expel adults and families. Advocates are critical of this decision, saying the public health justification is flimsy at best, but the administration has defended the Trump-era rule.At a White House briefing last week, the US southern border coordinator, Roberta Jacobson, spoke in Spanish and English.“La frontera está cerrada,” she said. “The border is closed.” More

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      Omar urges end to prison contracts to fix 'abuse-ridden' immigration detention system

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      Ilhan Omar has called on the Biden administration to phase out immigration detention contracts between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and local jails and prisons.In a letter to Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Minnesota Democrat said the contracts perpetuated mass incarceration.“In order to truly sever the financial incentives causing the expansion of an unnecessary and abuse-ridden system of mass incarceration, we urge you to end contracts between the federal government and localities for the purposes of immigration detention,” Omar wrote, in a letter also signed by other Democratic members of Congress.Immigration activists have for years targeted such contracts at local levels.In New Jersey, lawmakers are considering proposals that would prevent counties, municipalities and private prison operators from entering into such contracts or renewing or extending those already in effect. In California in 2019 the governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a law blocking the state from entering into or renewing contracts with private prison companies.Biden is under pressure to address the sprawling US immigration detention system, the largest in the world and rampant with allegations of abuse.More than 70 members of Congress, including Omar, have called on Biden to phase out the use of private prisons for immigration detention. Biden signed an executive order to do so at justice department facilities, but not at facilities which detain migrants.Biden’s administration is also attempting to respond to an increase in asylum-seeking children at the southern border. 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.In recent weeks, thousands of children have stayed in CBP facilities beyond the 72-hour legal limit, after which they are supposed to be moved to the care of the US health department.A CBP tent facility in Donna, some 165 miles south of Dallas, is holding more than 1,000 children and teenagers, some as young as four. Lawyers who inspect immigrant detention facilities have said they have interviewed children who reported being held in packed conditions, some sleeping on the floor, others not able to shower for five days.Biden is using the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), best known for responding to natural disasters, to manage and care for the children.Later on Monday, it was reported that the administration plans to use a downtown Dallas convention center to hold up to 3,000 immigrant teenagers.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will be used for up to 90 days beginning as early as this week, according to written notification sent to members of the Dallas city council on Monday and obtained by the Associated Press. Federal agencies will use the facility to house boys ages 15 to 17, according to the memo, which described the soon-to-open site as a “decompression center”. More

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      Surge in migrants seeking to cross Mexico border poses challenge for Biden

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      The number of migrant children and families seeking to cross the US-Mexico border has increased to levels not seen since before the coronavirus pandemic – a challenge for Joe Biden as he works to undo the hardline immigration policies of predecessor Donald Trump.Statistics released Wednesday by US customs and border protection (CBP) showed the number of children and families increased by more than 100% between January and February.Children crossing by themselves rose 60% to more than 9,400, forcing the government to look for new places to hold them temporarily.Roberta Jacobson, the administration’s coordinator for the southern border and a former ambassador to Mexico, joined the White House press briefing on Wednesday.She said the president is committed to building a fair immigration system, but cannot undo the damage of the Trump administration “overnight”.She sidestepped a question about whether the situation at the border qualifies as a crisis.“Whatever you call it wouldn’t change what we’re doing,” Jacobson said.The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, previously said he does not consider the situation to be a crisis, which sparked intense criticism among Republicans, including Trump.But Jacobson said: “Surges tend to respond to hope. There was a hope for a more humane policy.”She also argued that the election of Biden allowed human smugglers to spread disinformation about migrants’ ability to enter the US immediately.“The border is not open,” Jacobson said and urged undocumented people not to make the dangerous journey.The Biden administration is turning back nearly all single adults, who make up the majority of border-crossers, under a public health order imposed by Trump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.And the administration is temporarily holding children and families, mostly from Central America, in government and private facilities for several days while it evaluates claims for asylum or determines if they have any other legal right to stay in the US.Republicans have argued that migrants are drawn by incentives such as the immigration bill backed by Biden and many Democrats that would offer a path to citizenship for millions of people living unlawfully in the US.“We’re seeing a surge of unaccompanied children coming across the border. Why? Joe Biden promised amnesty,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, tweeted.There were nearly 29,000 family units or unaccompanied minors in February. The last time it was higher was in October 2019.Biden officials have faced mounting questions about the temporary detention of migrant families, an issue that the two previous presidents had to deal with because of the instability in the region.Jacobson said the administration is asking Congress for $4bn for targeted aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.“Only by addressing those root causes can we break the cycle of desperation and provide hope for families who clearly would prefer to stay in their countries and provide a better future for their children,” she told reporters at the White House.Jacobson said the US is also restoring a program, ended under Trump, that reunited children in the three Central American countries with parents who are legal residents in the United States.The Department of Homeland Security has also begun processing the asylum claims of thousands of people who were forced by the Trump administration to stay in Mexico, often in dangerous conditions for a long time, for a decision on their case.A migrant camp that formed in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, in south-east Texas, recently was emptied of migrants as they were allowed into the US to process their immigration or asylum claims. More

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      Biden officials visit US-Mexico border to monitor increase in crossings

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      The new US secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, led a visit by Biden administration officials to the border with Mexico on Saturday, amid a growing number of border crossings and criticism by Republicans that a crisis is brewing.Joe Biden has sought to reverse rigid immigration polices set up by his predecessor as president, Donald Trump, whose presidency was dominated by efforts to build a border wall and reduce the number of legal and illegal migrants.Biden has faced criticism from immigration activists who say unaccompanied children and families are being held too long in detention centers instead of being released while asylum applications are considered.The White House said last week Biden had asked senior members of his staff to travel to the border and report back about the influx of unaccompanied minors. It declined at the time to release details about the trip, citing security and privacy concerns.Mayorkas and officials including domestic policy adviser Susan Rice visited a border patrol facility and a refugee resettlement facility, the White House said on Sunday.“They discussed capacity needs given the number of unaccompanied children and families arriving at our border,” a statement said, “the complex challenges with rebuilding our gutted border infrastructure and immigration system, as well as improvements that must be made in order to restore safe and efficient procedures to process, shelter, and place unaccompanied children with family or sponsors.“Officials also discussed ways to ensure the fair and humane treatment of immigrants, the safety of the workforce, and the wellbeing of communities nearby in the face of a global pandemic.”An influx of people seeking to cross the border is likely to be a big issue in the 2022 midterm elections. Trump may use it to rally his base against Biden and lay the groundwork for a potential return as a presidential candidate in 2024 or as a way to boost a successor.“The border is breaking down as I speak,” Republican South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, told Fox News on Sunday. “Immigration in 2022 will be a bigger issue than it was in 2016.” More