President Joe Biden is too focused on responding to the surge of migrants at the southern border, a border Democratic congressman said, rather than preventing further illegal immigration.
Henry Cuellar of Texas, a senior House Democrat, said the flow of illegal migration across the Mexican border “is not stopping” and that it may persist into this summer, despite the triple-digit heat that usually acts as a deterrent. Instead, Biden’s inability to quell the surge of people this spring is prompting more people to migrate, he said.
Cuellar expressed dismay in responses that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas gave during congressional hearings last week about the 21-year high in the number of people who attempted to cross the border illegally in April.
“It doesn’t seem to faze him that these large numbers are coming in,” Cuellar told the Washington Examiner.
The Biden administration has focused its response on reacting to the number of people arriving, doling out billions to house people before they are released into the United States — $3 billion to house children as of early May. Most recently, the White House planned to shift $2 billion in emergency coronavirus funds to cover the costs of housing and transporting people who have come across the border, Politico reported over the weekend. The Biden administration also has chosen not to return migrants to their home countries as the Trump administration had done amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re certainly not addressing the inflow situation,” said Cuellar, vice chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. The sentiment has been echoed by other Democrats in Congress, as well as many Republicans, including Sen. Mitt Romney, who said Mayorkas’s indifference toward the border was “extremely damning.” U.S. voters are overwhelmingly discontent with the worsening situation.
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In April, more than 172,000 people attempted to come across the southern border without permission or documentation, more than double the 78,000 people seen at the border in January and the highest monthly figure in 21 years. Cuellar said the U.S. could see 200,000 unlawful crossings in May due to the Biden administration’s inaction to stop the surge, which has generated increased migration from countries outside Central America.
Cuellar’s district sits along 200 miles of the border, from the Rio Grande Valley through Laredo and on to Del Rio in south-central Texas. The three regions are seeing different trends in terms of human smuggling by criminal organizations, which charge up to $8,000 per person to get migrants to and across the southern border illegally.
In the southeastern region of the Rio Grande Valley, half of all people encountered by the Border Patrol agents who patrol for illegal crossings between ports of entry are adults. Approximately 15% are children without parents or who may have been pushed across the river by their parents to take advantage of a change Biden made to policy that allows Central American children not to be sent home. The remaining 36% are families.
In Laredo, 90% of people encountered crossing illegally are single adults from Mexico trying to evade detection. In this region, smugglers use “stash houses” to hold people who have just gotten across, then will smuggle them further into the U.S. through tractor-trailer trucks that may carry 50 to 100 people inside, often without any air conditioning.
In Del Rio, migrants from countries beyond Central America are arriving in record-high numbers. This region has seen predominantly Venezuelan, Haitian, and Cuban people crossing the border since March.
Cuellar’s chief concern is the Biden administration’s plan to end Title 42, a public health protocol that allowed border authorities to turn away anyone caught crossing the border unlawfully rather than taking them into custody and holding them in jail-like confined spaces during the pandemic. More than 90% of adults who come over the border are turned away under the policy, and rescinding it would mean many would simply be released into the U.S., as the government has been doing with families and children. Biden has also begun releasing migrants into the country without assigning immigration court dates.
The Biden administration ought to be planning now what it will do with adults at the border when it chooses to stop automatically turning all away, Cuellar said.
If the Biden administration discontinues the automatic return of all adults but wishes not to release everyone into the U.S., the government will need additional funding for detention operations.
“I’m one of those Democrats, I want to give people their day in immigration court,” he said. “To just release people into the U.S. and wait for court hearings and all that, all it does is provide more incentive to the criminal organizations.”
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In conversations with Border Patrol agents, Cuellar said, the federal law enforcement agents have expressed frustration about taking people into custody when they will just “let them go.”
“‘Why are we here if we’re going to have this type of open policy again?'” Cuellar said, citing what agents have said.
