President Joe Biden hinted Thursday he may block most ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children” (UAC) migrants at the border by excluding the many migrants who claim to be aged 16 or 17.
“I asked my team — both the director of the two agencies, as well as others … their opinion because they’re the experts — but I said, ‘Focus on the most vulnerable immediately,’” Biden said in his first White House press conference, where he defended his migration policies as better than President Donald Trump’s border policies.
The comment came as Biden suggested he would adopt a hard line on border crossers. “What about dealing with [migrant] families? Why are some not going back?” Biden said. “Because Mexico is refusing to take them back ….We’re in negotiations with the President of Mexico, and I think we’re going to see that change. They should all be going back, all be going back.”
The migrant wave is rising and Biden’s polls are falling, so “they’ve got to do something,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “This may have been a way of preparing for that.”
For almost 20 minutes, Biden simultaneously insisted he is blocking adults’ migration at the border but also protecting the many children and youths who are delivered to the border by the smugglers working for their parents who are living illegally in the United States.
The U.S. is sending back the “vast majority” of families who arrive at the border, he claimed, adding:
The idea that I’m going to say — which I would never do — if an unaccompanied child ends up at the border, we’re just going to let them starve to death and stay on the other side. No previous administrations did either, except Trump. I’m not going to do it.
In reality, Trump’s deputies used their border authority against epidemics to carefully return children and teenagers to extended families in their home countries. Also, Biden’s deputies are admitting almost 90 percent of families who appear at the border.
Biden’s political problem is that U.S. processing facilities are overcrowded with the waves of migrant children and youths because many U.S.-based illegal-migrant parents are paying coyotes to deliver their children to Biden’s pro-migration border agencies. The result is a growing backlog of roughly 17,000 under-18 children and teenagers in the system.
On March 25, for example, 601 children and teenagers arrived. Still, only 437 were transferred from border facilities to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and only 268 minors were transferred to migrant parents and other sponsors, according to an HHS statement. The crush left a record level of 5,156 minors at the border and 11,900 minors at HHS shelters, according to the statement.
Biden’s backlog is a political embarrassment for the Democrats because their base was delighted whenever Democrats jeered Trump’s much small backlogs as ‘kids in cages.” The Democrats’ sneer was such an emotional hit among progressives that Biden made sure to mention it in the third presidential debate.
This political legacy means Biden is under strong pressure to minimize the backlog of the under-18 minors who are legally classified as “Unaccompanied Alein Children,” or UACs, despite them being delivered by coyotes into the hands of U.S. border officers.
Biden’s team is pursuing several fixes while also insisting that problem was caused by Trump, bad weather, and good weather…
One fix is to dramatically expand the number of processing sites. Biden’s officials are pushing that option, and Biden made sure to mention the creation of several new sites at military bases.
But Biden twice hinted at the second option — to temporarily exclude the 70 percent of UAC migrants who say they are aged 16 or 17.
Biden said:
The other thing I want to point out to you, and I hope you point out: I realize it’s much more heart-wrenching — and it is — to deal with a five- and six- and seven-year-old. But you went down there, and you saw: The vast majority of these children — 70 percent — are 16 years old, 17 years old, and mostly males. Doesn’t make it — that doesn’t make it good, bad, or indifferent. But the idea that we have tens of thousands of kids in these God-awful facilities that are, really, little babies crying all night — and there’s some; that’s true. That’s why we got to act.
And yesterday, I asked my team — both the director of the two agencies, as well as others — I asked them what would they, in fact — and I asked their opinion because they’re the experts — but I said, “Focus on the most vulnerable immediately.”
Biden also said:
We’re sending back the vast majority of the families that are coming …
And those who are coming across the border, who are unaccompanied children, we’re moving rapidly to try to put in place what was dismantled, as I said. For example, of all the children who are coming across the border, over 70 percent are either 16 or 17 years old. We’re not talking about people ripping babies from mothers’ arms or little three-year-olds standing on the border. Less than — I think it’s one and a half percent fall in the category of the very young.
So what we’re doing is we’re providing for the space, again, to be able to get these kids out of the Border Patrol facilities, which no child — no one should be in any longer than 72 hours.
In mid-May, however, Biden’s homeland defense secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, appeared to reject the teenage-exclusion option after protests by pro-migration groups.
However, Mayorkas has sidelined during internal White Hous fights over migration policy. In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris has been given the job of persuading Mexico and other countries to help physically block migrants.
Biden also said the processing system is being delayed by the need to vet the illegal-migrant parents of the migrant children. That problem has been made worse by Mayorkas’ announcement that he would not try to detain and deport illegals who picked up their coyote-delivered children at HHS offices.
Biden said:
The next thing that has to happen though — as you well know has to happen — there have to be some certitude that this is the — actually mom, dad, or whomever. And there’s ways to do that. There’s ways to do that — a little bit like determining whether or not you got the right code for your credit card, you know? …. And also seeking harder data, from DNA to — to birth certificates, which takes longer.
The vetting problem would be reduced if the older teenagers were excluded because many teenagers repay their smuggling debts by working illegally in American jobs for their labor traffickers.
However, it is not clear if Biden’s hints and dodge are merely intended to minimize his immediate political problem — or if they suggest that he plans to change strategy and reduce the inflow of migrants.
The worsening polls, and the growing political risk, and the damage to his pro-amnesty agenda in Congress, suggest that he is planning to reverse the pro-=mifgrartion course set by his pro-migration zealots, such as Mayorkas.
But Biden — like many other Democrats — is emotionally committed to more migration, despite the deep economic damage it does to wage-earning Americans. At the press conference, Biden declared:
When my great grandfather got on a “coffin ship” in the Irish Sea [in the 1800s], expectation was: Was he going to live long enough on that ship to get to the United States of America? But they left because of what the Brits had been doing. They were in real, real trouble. They didn’t want to leave. But they had no choice. … I can’t guarantee we’re going to solve everything, but I can guarantee we can make everything better. We can make it better. We can change the lives of so many [foreign] people.
For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad American opposition to legal migration, labor migration, and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democrat, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles still pushing the 1950s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.
Estb. media is posting many stories about migrant”‘children” crossing the border — but 70%+ are teenagers, many of whom are (rationally) seeking jobs.
IOW, Biden’s DHS & estb. media are waiving in huge numbers of Latino child workers. #CharlesDickenshttps://t.co/cfWf1Bz9ic— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) March 5, 2021
Comments are closed.