Julie Pace, a reporter with the Associated Press, said in an interview at the start of the week that the Biden administration has no plan in place to deal with President Joe Biden’s border crisis and that migrants are reading his policies as an open invitation to come to the U.S.
When asked by host Chris Wallace if Biden had a plan to get his border crisis under control, Pace responded, “Well, they don’t have a plan at the moment to get this under control.”
“We do know that the White House is dispatching some officials to the border to try to see this situation firsthand,” she continued. “But, right now, they’re caught in this situation where they are saying that the policy steps that we’ve seen Biden take on emigration, essentially rolling back a lot of the Trump administration’s deterrence policies should not be read by migrants as an open invitation. Do not amass at the border. This does not mean you can get across easily.”
“But for all of their talk about that, all of their messaging on it, that’s not the message that is actually being received by a lot of migrants and so you do have this situation where people are increasingly coming to the border, families with young children do feel like this is a moment where they can get into the United States,” she added. “They do feel like there’s going to be a more receptive policy from the Biden administration. So this is the challenge that the White House has. If they don’t think that their policy actually is an open invitation, then they have to signal that more clearly because that is — that is, obviously, not the way it is being interpreted at the moment.”
WATCH:
TRANSCRIPT:
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: Anyway, let’s move on to this quite serious question about this surge of unaccompanied minors across the border. The Biden administration seems determined to kind of play it down. Take a look at this exchange this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Do you believe that right now there’s a crisis of the border?
ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: I think that the — the answer is no. I think there is a challenge at the border that we are managing and we have our resources dedicated to — to managing it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Julie, the Department of Homeland Security put out a report this week. It wasn’t put out to the public, but it was leaked, that they are now projecting 117,000 unaccompanied minors that are going to cross the border this year, way over what we thought was a very serious surge in 2019. Is that sustainable for the — for the Biden White House to say, well, it’s not a crisis, it’s a challenge, we’re managing it, and — and, more importantly, do they really have a plan to get this under control?
PACE: Well, they don’t have a plan at the moment to get this under control. We do know that the White House is dispatching some officials to the border to try to see this situation firsthand. But, right now, they’re caught in this situation where they are saying that the policy steps that we’ve seen Biden take on emigration, essentially rolling back a lot of the Trump administration’s deterrence policies should not be read by migrants as an open invitation. Do not amass at the border. This does not mean you can get across easily. But for all of their talk about that, all of their messaging on it, that’s not the message that is actually being received by a lot of migrants and so you do have this situation where people are increasingly coming to the border, families with young children do feel like this is a moment where they can get into the United States. They do feel like there’s going to be a more receptive policy from the Biden administration. So this is the challenge that the White House has. If they don’t think that their policy actually is an open invitation, then they have to signal that more clearly because that is — that is, obviously, not the way it is being interpreted at the moment.