ICE asks for volunteers to send to the border as soon as this weekend and south Texas migrant complex is SEVEN times over capacity: Biden downplays influx and claims it's not a crisis
ICE has asked for volunteers to send to the US-Mexico border 'as soon as this weekend' as a south Texas migrant complex is seven times over capacity and reports are surfacing of children being forced to sleep on floors of detention centers.
Michael Meade, ICE's acting assistant director for field operations called for the 'immediate' deployment of available personnel to the border in an urgent email to senior staff Thursday night as he warned the challenging circumstances will likely 'grow over the coming months'.
More than 3,500 unaccompanied teens and children have been held in Customs Border Patrol (CBP) detention centers designed for adults in recent days as Joe Biden's easing of immigration rules has fueled a surge in migrants crossing the border.
Yet the president insists there is no crisis at the border.
Biden officials privately warned Friday the administration cannot cope with the influx of children but the official line coming from the White House continues to be that it is only 'an enormous challenge.'
Despite repeated denials in public, the administration yesterday rolled back a Trump-era policy that had allowed adults picking up undocumented children to be detained by border agents - in a move hoped to speed up the processing of migrants through the system.
Since taking office, Biden lifted the Trump policy that forced migrants to remain in Mexico while going through the legal process to enter the US, narrowed the ICE's criteria for arrests and deportations and stopped the building of Trump's border wall.
These moves have led thousands upon thousands of migrants pouring into America leaving the border's children's centers so full that kids are being forced to spend up to 10 days in cramped detention centers meant for adults and sparking a backlog and logistical nightmare in processing the new entrants.
Biden is coming under fire from both parties with Republicans planning to use what they have branded 'Biden's Border Crisis' as their ticket to taking back the House in 2022, while Democrats have hit out at the White House's lack of preparedness for the influx his changes were in no doubt of bringing.
Migrant families and children climb the banks of the Rio Grande River into the United States as smugglers on rafts prepare to return to Mexico
A migrant walks amid tents at an improvised camp outside El Chaparral crossing port as he and others wait for US authorities to allow them to start their migration process in Tijuana
An entrance to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility housing unaccompanied migrant children in Donna
Migrants enter the United States at the Paso del Norte Bridge between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on March 11
Children must legally be transferred from CBP detention centers to the HHS shelters within 72 hours of their arrival.
But this requirement has gone out of the window as the latest data from the Department of Homeland Security shows most children are spending on average 108 hours in the cramped CBP facilities.
More than 130 children have been held in the CBP facilities for 10 days.
The CBP detained or processed a staggering 100,441 migrants in February with nearly 10,000 of those being unaccompanied children - levels not seen since May 2019, when a dramatic surge in migrant family arrivals overwhelmed border facilities.
So far in March, more than 4,200 people are arriving into America across the border per day, which if sustained would rival the 132,856 apprehensions recorded in May 2019 - which was the most in 13 years.
The surge is leading to overcrowded conditions as the CBP centers - built for adult men - and the HHS shelters do not have space for the mounting numbers.
Staff are also buckling under the weight of the demand unable to process quickly enough the volume of migrants at centers, with the ICE calling on volunteers to send to facilities in Texas to help.
'This situation mandates immediate action to protect the life and safety of federal personnel and the aliens in custody,' Meade wrote in the email, obtained by The Washington Post.
'Start and end dates are TBD, but could begin as soon as this weekend at location along the SWB [southwest border], most likely Texas.
'It is anticipated that the enforcement actions will continue to grow over the coming months.'
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also issued a plea for assistance from other agencies to help with admin duties due to the 'overwhelming number of migrants seeking access to this country along the Southwest Border.'
One official told the Post this is the first time they have seen the ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations branch ask for volunteers to help with a wave in migrants.
Anonymous Biden officials admitted to reporters Friday they do not have the capacity to increase beds to meet the demand from the record number of migrants crossing the border, the Post reported.
They said they are now working to fast-track the release of undocumented children to relatives in the US as they cannot ramp up capacity for more migrants.
Around 200 beds were added to shelters this week - not nearly enough for the surge in children and families - with bureaucratic processes meaning permission to increase shelter capacity often lies with state regulators.
While new emergency sites are being considered for NASA's Moffett Field and the Fort Lee military base, this is also held up by political wrangling.
Congress must be given 15 days notice before a new temporary site can be opened, a senior administration official told the Post, adding that no such notice has yet been given.
'We are also required to notify Congress before we make a formal site assessment to see if a location is suitable for children,' they said.
'Any coming online for any facility is going to take weeks from that initial assessment.'
The official line from the Biden administration continues to be that there is no crisis
Children at one facility in south Texas are going hungry with many reporting they have only been able to shower once in seven days as the center is at 729 percent of its legal capacity, reported CBS.
Under pandemic safety rules to allow for social distancing, the CBP holding facility in Donna is permitted to hold a maximum of 250 migrants.
On March 2, there were more than 1,800 people held in the facility, CBS reported.
The facility was initially erected as a temporary site in anticipation of a surge in migration while the permanent center in McAllen is renovated but is already busting at the seams.
Neha Desai, a lawyer representing migrant youth in government custody, told the outlet children are being forced to sleep on the floor due to a lack of beds while some are being held as long as seven days - more than double the legal 72-hour limit.
'Some of the boys said that conditions were so overcrowded that they had to take turns sleeping on the floor,' Desai said after interviewing almost a dozen unaccompanied migrant children at the center.
'They all said they wanted to shower more and were told they couldn't.'
Many children also said they were being denied phone calls with their family members and hadn't been outside in days.
One of them shared that he could only see the sun when he showered, because you can see the sun through the window,' Desai said.
'Multiple kids said the exact same sentence: 'the only time I get up is to throw away trash or go to the bathroom.''
Acting CBP commissioner Troy Miller said in a press call Wednesday the children are being well looked after with welfare checks, blankets, baby formula, hot meals and showers at least every 48 hours.
'Many of us, maybe most of us, are parents. I myself have a 6-year-old, and these Border Patrol agents go above and beyond every single day to take care of the children,' he said.
However he admitted the agency is 'struggling' with the surge of migrant families and children at the facilities since Biden eased immigration rules when he came into office.
Migrants from Central America are pictured at the Paso del Norte International Bridge after being deported
Migrants entering the US at the Paso del Norte International Bridge in El Paso, Texas on March 11
Last week, the Biden administration reopened the Carrizo Springs, Texas tent facility shuttered by the Trump administration in 2019 so it could take in another 700 children between 13 and 17 years old.
After taking office, Biden lifted the Remain in Mexico policy, which kept migrants south of the border while waiting for their hearings, effectively allowing migrants who have applied for asylum to cross into the UD and begin their legal proceedings.
He also narrowed the ICE's criteria for arrests and deportations and stopped the building of Trump's border wall.
On Friday, his administration announced they were rolling back a Trump-era policy that allowed undocumented immigrants to be arrested when they came to pick up unaccompanied children.
'There will not be any immigration enforcement consequences for a family member or sponsor who comes forward to be united with an unaccompanied child in our care,' a senior administration official told reporters Friday on a briefing call.
In the spring of 2018, the Trump administration tightened up the screening process - including getting ICE involved - for adults who stepped forward to sponsor children who traveled into the United States alone.
This led to a much smaller number of children being released from Health and Human Services custody to a family member or sponsor, amid fears from adults they would also be deported.
The Biden administration ended this rule in the hope it would no longer deter adults providing sponsorship to unaccompanied children.
This came two days after Special Advisor to the president Roberta Jacobsen admitted in a White House briefing on Wednesday that the timing of the surge in migrants was 'no coincidence' with the change in rules under Biden.
'We've seen surges before. Surges tend to respond to hope, and there was significant hope for a more humane policy after four years of pent-up demand,' she said.
'So I don't know if I would call that a coincidence.'
Jacobsen said that the 'more humane policy' now in place has likely given rise to rumors among people traffickers of leniency.
The 'coyotes', as the smugglers are known, have then encouraged more migrants to pay to make the journey, she said.
'The idea that a more humane policy would be in place may have driven people to make that decision, but perhaps, more importantly, it definitely drove smugglers to express disinformation, spread disinformation about what was now possible,' she said.
Inside the Donna facility in Texas in January where children are reportedly forced to sleep on the floor due to a lack of beds
Soft sided structures constructed in anticipation of a surge in migration while the permanent Centralized Processing Center in McAllen is renovated at the CBP temporary processing facility in Donna, Texas
An aerial view of the Donna facility which is at 726 percent of its legal pandemic capacity
Jacobsen said that with a $4 billion plan, Biden hopes to tackle immigration at its root causes, working to make Latin American countries safer and more prosperous, and reduce the incentive to leave.
But, in the meantime, the migrants, the centers and shelters and immigration staff are overwhelmed as the administration has not matched the change in immigration rules with the ability to ramp up the capacity for migrants at shelters.
Border Patrol agents found 96,974 migrants last month, up from 75,312 in January. Another 3,467 were taken into custody at ports of entry.
Almost half - 43 per cent - were from Mexico, with 20 per cent from Honduras, 19 per cent from Guatemala, 6 per cent from El Salvador, and 12 per cent from other countries.
Two thirds, 68,732, of those encountered were single adults - the most single adults for any month since October 2011, according to the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), which advocates for human rights and social justice along the border.
Nearly all single adults were expelled, WOLA said, but the 9,297 unaccompanied children who arrived in February were taken to shelters, which are rapidly-becoming overwhelmed.
The majority of the children were from Guatemala, followed by Honduras and Mexico.
Some Migrants crossing from Mexico into the United States are using a bar on the border in Texas to wash and change before heading inland, the bar owner said, with one woman even giving birth in the bar.
Lupe Cabrera, whose family has run Cabrera's Bar in the small Rio Grande city of Granjeno for 60 years, told National Review one young women even had a baby 'right by the trash bin'.
And yet the official line from the White House continues to be that there is no crisis.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to be drawn into saying the word instead calling it an 'enormous challenge'.
'It doesn't matter what you call it. It is an enormous challenge,' she said in the White House press briefing Thursday.
'We don't feel the need to, you know, play games with what it's called.'
Mayorkas meanwhile tried to lay some of the blame on the pandemic.
'One of the issues we’ve had is that the Covid-19 pandemic initially severely limited the number of children that could be taken into HHS facilities and the pace at which they can happen and the pace at which that can happen,' she said.
'What I also think is important is to talk about what the root causes are here and what we're doing from a policy standpoint to try and address the challenges that we're facing and that these kids are facing as they come across the border.'
But the White House stance isn't being accepted by lawmakers with both Republicans and Democrats voicing concerns over the Biden administration's handling of the matter.
Republicans have slammed Biden's approach with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and a group of senior lawmakers vowing to visit south Texas on Monday to see the situation firsthand.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gathered GOP House leadership and more than a dozen members Thursday morning to hold a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on 'Biden's Border Crisis'
The party has very much branded the situation a 'crisis', with a group of House GOP leadership and members holding a press conference outside the Capitol on 'Biden's Border Crisis' Thursday.
Rep. John Katko branded it 'disorder at the border by executive order' and charged the Biden administration with 'twisting itself into a pretzel to avoid saying the dreaded word "crisis."'
The party is also optimising on the chaos in the hope it could be their ticket to taking a majority in the House next year, with Sen. Tom Cotton urging his Republican colleagues to drill it into Americans' heads that Biden's policies created the border 'crisis'.
A new CNN poll shows immigration as the subject area where Biden is getting the lowest marks, with 49 per cent disapproving of the Democrat's handling, compared to 43 per cent who approve.
By comparison, Biden received 60 per cent approval on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. About a third, 34 per cent, disapproved.
Former President Donald Trump also waded into the debate at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, branding it 'a self-inflicted humanitarian and national security disaster.'
Democrats representing border regions are also beginning to ask questions about why the Biden administration was not better prepared.
Vicente Gonzalez, a congressman representing Texas whose district includes the McAllen-Reynosa border, warned that the situation was going to get worse.
Honduran nationals are escorted out of the brush by a Texas State Trooper after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico on a raft
Border Patrol agents found 96,974 migrants last month, up from 75,312 in January. Another 3,467 were taken into custody at ports of entry
Almost half - 43 per cent - were from Mexico, with 20 per cent from Honduras, 19 per cent from Guatemala, 6 per cent from El Salvador, and 12 per cent from other countries
'My concern in the recent weeks, in my district, is migrants who made it across the border,' he told CNN.
'They made it across the Rio Grande Valley, were processed and released.
'I can assure you, it won't be long before we have tens of thousands of people showing up to our border, and it'll be catastrophic for our country, for my region, for my district.
'In the middle of a pandemic, in an area where we've lost over 3,000 people in my small congressional district, I think we need to have a better plan in place.'
Henry Cuellar, another Texan in the House, and whose district covers a large swathe of the border from McAllen towards Piedras Negras, said in early March that the problem began under Trump, and has worsened with Biden.
He also accused the Biden administration of hiding the real number of unaccompanied children at the US-Mexico border.
'Yeah, look, we can play with words, is it a challenge or is it a crisis,' Cuellar said on Fox News.
'Let's look at the numbers. Since August of last year the numbers have been increasing. And especially October, November and December we were hitting 70,000. In January we had 78,000.
Representative Vicente Gonzalez warned that there would soon be tens of thousands of arrivals
Representative Henry Cuellar said the problem began under Trump, and has worsened
'And this is, again, under the Trump administration, now moving into the Biden administration.'
'I don't care what we call it, but I can tell you this — those numbers of people being released, they're purposefully withholding that information. They've been told not to withhold that information.
'I now know that they're bringing people from McAllen over to Laredo, processing them in Laredo, and they're going to release them in my community.'
And state senator Juan 'Chuy' Hinojosa, another Democrat, who lives on the border, told The Hill that he does not think the Biden administration was prepared for the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border.
'It's gotten worse,' Hinojosa said.
'I don't think, quite frankly, the Biden administration was aware of what's happening on the ground here, which you can understand because they're just coming in and trying to get people up to speed with what's happening, but I don't think they were aware there were that many coming across.
'The Border Patrol is overwhelmed, they're throwing their hands up because they don't know what to do.'
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