President Biden’s policies have created a crisis at the border unlike anything we have seen before, specifically in the masses of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) crossing our border every day.
In FY2021 (through February), there have been 29,729 UAC encountered on the southern border by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Comparatively, there were 33,239 encounters for the entirety of FY2020, however, that number was unusually low due to the COVID-19 pandemic (which is still raging even as encounters soar). We have even exceeded where FY2019 was at this point in the year (28,942). FY2019 saw record numbers of UAC, with more than 80,000 UAC apprehended at the border, but we will likely far surpass that number unless the Biden administration changes course.
By legal obligation, CBP transfers most unaccompanied minors to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within three days of taking them into custody. However, the influx in migrants is so large that the system is backlogged and cannot rehouse these minors fast enough.
One migrant facility in Donna, Texas, was at 729 percent capacity at the beginning of March, forcing many minors to sleep on the floor and go several days without showering due to overcrowding. Similarly, the Rio Grande Valley sector is currently at 363 percent capacity, holding more than 2,500 UAC.
As a result, the federal government is scrambling to find temporary shelters. As many as 3,000 teen migrants are to be housed at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas. The administration has also reopened several controversial temporary migrant facilities like Carrizo Springs in Texas and Homestead in Florida, which is now called the Biscayne Influx Care Facility.
Biden and many of his cohorts blasted Trump for placing “kids in cages” which were originally built by the Obama administration. Of course, these facilities are not “cages,” but the hypocrisy by the Biden administration is still quite apparent. Now that he is president, Biden has decided they are “overflow facilities” instead, as if that erases the nature of his crisis.
While the Department of Homeland Security has admitted that it is struggling to process and house the masses of migrants entering their custody, they refuse to call it what it is, a humanitarian crisis. Additionally, rather than admitting this is a self-inflicted crisis caused by their own policies, the administration is blaming the situation on the former president, stating he “left us a dismantled and unworkable immigration system.”
Yet, Biden has undone almost every Trump-era policy which de-incentivized illegal immigration and prioritized Americans over foreign nationals. President Biden rang the bell to foreign nationals hoping to come to the U.S. illegally. He has no one to blame but himself and the policies that he has enacted, which are driving the crisis.