“I came down here because I heard of the crisis. It’s more than a crisis, this is a human heartbreak,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said during a press conference after touring the El Paso Central Processing Center in El Paso, Texas. “The sad part about all this, didn’t have to happen. This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration. There’s no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.”

The trip comes as the Biden administration is facing an influx of migrant children coming to the border as there is limited facilities to hold them. In addition, the trip comes as the House is about to take up two immigration bills that would create a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers,” undocumented individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children, and farm workers.

McCarthy, along with the 12 other Republican members of the House, said Biden was to blame for the surge after he reversed several of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

“The cartels know when to exploit this southern border, and they’re doing it now masterfully,” said Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., and ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security. “They’re doing it because President Biden rolled back a lot of the orders of the previous administration that were working.”

Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, pushed back against her Republican colleagues, who blamed the president.

“We first started seeing pretty significant numbers of families arriving at our front door under the Trump administration,” Escobar said during a virtual press conference Monday afternoon. “The flow has never stopped. The journey that these families have been making, it’s never stopped. What the Trump administration did in the last year during COVID, and through MPP and through other really awful and horrific policies, was not stop immigration.

What he did was create some pretty dangerous conditions right outside our front door,” Escobar said.

More: The House is taking up immigration changes this week. Democrats are cautiously optimistic about Senate support

In his first weeks in office, Biden stopped construction on the border wall and began unwinding several of Trump’s hardline immigration policies. However, the Biden administration has kept one key policy in place from the Trump administration, Title 42, which allows the government to expel undocumented migrants coming to the U.S. seeking asylum.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy addresses th press during the congressional border delegation visit to El Paso, Texas on March 15. Justin Hamel/AFP via Getty Images

Over the past several months, the Biden administration has seen a surge of unaccompanied migrant children to the border, and has struggled to quickly move the children from short-term holding facilities to temporary influx facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

As of Sunday morning, more than 4,200 unaccompanied migrant children were being held in short-term holding facilities, according to CBS News. Migrant children are supposed to be moved from the short-term facilities within 72 hours. Those facilities are jail-like and are not suited for long-term containment.

In an attempt to help combat the surge, the administration is deploying officials from Health and Human Services and the Office of Refugee Resettlement to help begin the vetting process for sponsors for these children more quickly. In addition, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been deployed for the next three months to help receive, shelter and transfer unaccompanied migrant children, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Saturday.

More: Gov. Greg Abbott in South Texas says Biden administration ‘invites illegal immigration’

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday the administration is facing “a big challenge” at the border and using “every level of the federal government to help address that.” However, she has not called the surge a “crisis” or a humanitarian disaster.

“They’re playing a number of roles there to address what we feel is a significant problem and a significant challenge, and I think we haven’t … been hiding about that,” Psaki said of FEMA aiding at the border.

Although the White House has yet to label the surge of undocumented children at the border a “crisis,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Sunday that there is a “humanitarian crisis” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The Biden administration is trying to fix the broken system that was left to them by the Trump administration,” Pelosi said. “The Biden administration will have a system, based on doing the best possible job, understanding this is a humanitarian crisis.”

For the trip to the border, McCarthy was accompanied by:

• Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y.
• Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn.
• Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La.
• Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas
• Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas
• Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla.
• Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-N.M.
• Rep. David Joyce, R-Ohio
• Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa
• Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas
• Rep. John Rose, R-Tenn.
• Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla.
   

Salazar, who represents parts of Miami, raised concerns that children coming to the border could become victim to human trafficking. Salazar, who is of Cuban descent, said Latinos from Central America are the ones who are at high risk of being trafficked.

“We need to join forces and send a message that we cannot allow what’s happening on the border, because it’s our girls, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, the ones who are being raped. It’s our girls, the ones, the children who are being trafficked,” Salazar said.

The Biden administration has also raised concerns about human trafficking. Psaki has previously said that the vetting process for a sponsor for an unaccompanied migrant child is taking longer because they want to make sure the child isn’t falling into a human trafficking situation.

‘Unacceptable’:Border Patrol holding hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children in El Paso

The Biden administration has repeatedly said that the border is currently closed and has called on migrants to stop trying to make the dangerous journey to the United States’ southern border.

Although the Republican lawmakers criticized Biden’s handling of the surge of undocumented migrants, some noted they are open to altering some legal paths to immigration. For example, McCarthy noted those seeking an education in the United States who are from another country should have a system in place to stay and work in the U.S. after they graduate.

“Let’s make a system that actually works, put it on merit, have the ability to come,” McCarthy said.

Reach Rebecca Morin at Twitter @RebeccaMorin_

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/15/kevin-mccarthy-republicans-slam-biden-migrants-us-mexico-border/4701550001/

The post As Biden faces ongoing surge of migrant children, Republicans criticize White House for border crisis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

On February 28 a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the Remain in Mexico policy. Groups of asylum-seeking migrants gathered at the southern border causing concern by the Border Patrol that they would try to storm the border. It was a legitimate concern because of past chaos at the border, including caravans from Central America. The Paso del Norte International Bridge in downtown El Paso was closed, as well as other crossings.

CBP spokesman Ralph DeSio addressed the growing tension and the fact that ports of entry are not equipped to handle large groups arriving all at the same time. After the ruling by the 9th Circuit Court, about 30 migrants enrolled in the Remain in Mexico program and waited with their attorneys, requesting to be admitted into the U.S. Fortunately the migrants remained orderly.

“The balance between facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel while upholding our national border security mission and the safety of the public and our personnel is delicate,” DeSio said in a statement. “Ports of entry are not designed or equipped to handle extremely large groups of travelers arriving all at the same time, and temporary closure of a [port of entry] is contemplated as an extreme option, as necessary for public safety and border security.”

The migrants were turned away and the Ninth Circuit Court panel agreed to stay its own order. The Remain in Mexico policy stays in place until the Wednesday deadline. If the Supreme Court rules against taking up the Trump administration’s appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court has ruled that the Remain in Mexico policy will be blocked in the border states within its jurisdiction – California and Arizona. That court does not have jurisdiction over New Mexico or Texas.

The Department of Defense is deploying 160 troops to two cities determined to be key spots should the Remain in Mexico policy end. Eighty active-duty troops will go to San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing and eighty active-duty troops will go to the Paso del Norte bridge in El Paso. The troops are equipped to provide military police support, as well as engineer, and aviation support. They are part of the DOD’s Crisis Response Force.

The 160 troops are part of the Defense Department’s Crisis Response Force, which the Pentagon has made available to CBP since Trump initially deployed soldiers to the border in November 2018 in anticipation of the arrival of a large caravan.

A CBP spokesman said the deployment to San Diego and El Paso would begin Saturday and last for two weeks. The agency has the option, based on current needs, to extend the deployment and even “lift and shift” to other border crossings, he said.

There is the consideration of the government’s efforts to contain the coronavirus at the border, too. COVID-19 screenings have been implemented at the border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan told reporters on Thursday morning they are working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to monitor and evaluate health risks along the entire border to determine the best approach to contain the virus, known as COVID-19.

“If the health risk shifts and the CDC and the medical experts decide that there is an increased risk to the Southwest border, and CBP will be part of those discussions on what we need to do then to operationalize and reduce that risk,” he said.

Morgan says that more than 60,000 people have been referred to the CDC for additional screenings. Most screenings take place at airports, though, but CBP is following the same protocols on the northern and southern borders.

The perpetually outraged open-borders crowd is not happy with the additional deployment of troops to the border. Some are accusing the Trump administration of using concern over the spread of COVID-19 as a justification for the order.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a freshman Democrat from El Paso, said in a written statement that the Trump administration is using COVID-19 as “an excuse to sow fear about asylum seekers in an effort to continue to violate the law.”

“While it is no surprise, it is nonetheless deeply disappointing that the Trump administration would use the coronavirus as an excuse to sow fear about asylum seekers in an effort to continue to violate the law,” Escobar said. “It is because we are all concerned about the coronavirus that we need to focus our resources on our real challenges, like the limited number of tests available, something that troops on the border won’t address.”

Escobar’s complaint doesn’t hold water. The Trump administration, especially President Trump himself, has been very careful to not “sow fear” to anyone over COVID-19 while trying to get the message out about its potential spread, which is likely. Trump shut down flights from China early and assembled a team of public health professionals to tackle the problem. The storming of the border by migrants hoping to receive asylum and be released into the United States, as has happened in the past, cannot be allowed. Not only is it a national security risk, but it is also a public health risk. The open-borders crowd will never be happy until the southern border, in particular, no longer exists. They are not concerned with protecting the sovereignty of the United States. Fortunately, President Trump is and continues to do a good job on that front.

Source: https://hotair.com/archives/karen-townsend/2020/03/08/dept-defense-orders-crisis-response-force-southern-border/

The post Dept Of Defense Orders Crisis Response Force To Southern Border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.