Immigrants who are swarming to the U.S.-Mexico border say President Joe Biden “promised” them they would be allowed to enter the country.
“Biden promised us that everything was going to change,” Gladys Oneida Pérez Cruz, a woman who traveled to the border with her son, told The New York Times. “He hasn’t done it yet, but he is going to be a good president for migrants.”
The Times said another woman in tears at the border said, “Biden promised us!”
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers say that some 100,000 foreigners came to the border in February alone, and after weeks of claiming all is well, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Saturday acknowledged that “record numbers” of foreigners are overwhelming U.S. agencies, prompting the department to call in help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“The federal government is responding to the arrival of record numbers of individuals, including unaccompanied children, at the southwest border. Since April 2020, the number of encounters at the border has been rising due to ongoing violence, natural disasters, food insecurity, and poverty in the Northern Triangle countries of Central America,” the DHS said. “The federal government is working around the clock to move unaccompanied children from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) care and to place them with a family member or sponsor until their immigration case is adjudicated. The risks posed by the spread of COVID-19 have made this mission all the more difficult.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) last week dubbed the situation the “Biden border crisis” and said some foreigners wore shirts saying “Biden, let us in.”
“Joe Biden and the Democrats … they don’t believe in borders. They don’t, therefore, think it is a crisis. They think this is a feature not a bug of their policy. They’ve literally turned detention centers — that are designed to turn people away at our borders — into reception centers. That’s what they’re gonna’ call them. What signal is that going to send? We’ve seen migrants wearing their shirts that say, ‘Biden, let us in,'” Cotton said.
In some of his first actions in office, Biden did away with the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which kept foreigners who tried to enter the U.S. illegally in Mexico to await hearings. Instead, Biden has returned to a “catch-and-release” policy in which illegal aliens are allowed to enter the U.S.
“I am grateful for the exceptional talent and responsiveness of the FEMA team,” Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said over the weekend. “I am incredibly proud of the agents of the Border Patrol, who have been working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care. Yet, as I have said many times, a Border Patrol facility is no place for a child. We are working in partnership with HHS to address the needs of unaccompanied children, which is made only more difficult given the protocols and restrictions required to protect the public health and the health of the children themselves. Our goal is to ensure that unaccompanied children are transferred to HHS as quickly as possible, consistent with legal requirements and in the best interest of the children.”