A new year, a new president, a return to an old problem: unaccompanied children crossing the border in large numbers.
Thousands of children – usually older teenagers, aged 16 or 17, but border patrol agents report that the number of children under 13 is arriving from Central America every month.
A Customs and Border Protection staff member reportedly told senior officials of the administration in Biden to expect a peak of 13,000 minor minors to cross the border in May – the highest level ever.
‘We see the highest February figures [that] what we have seen in the history of the [Unaccompanied Alien Child] program, ”an official from the Department of Health and Human Services told Axios.
That’s right: a crisis worse than the one that brought the “kids in cages” backlash under President Donald Trump, and the earlier crises that led to the construction of the “cages” under President Barack Obama.
And this is a crisis that we and others have warned would come as soon as President Biden began to reverse every Trump border policy, even those that were clearly responsible for producing historic lows in illegal cruisers, and return to Obama policy that first caused the unprecedented waves of children crossing. without family.
Now Biden must reopen shelters to house the children until his associates can figure out what to do with them – shelters that his usual allies denounced as horrors during the Trump years. Still, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “there are very few good options here, and we chose the choice we thought was best.”
It’s just because her boss has already turned down the option of trying to make sure they do not come here.