Not being accompanied at the border will be Biden’s first big test

They are alone, scared and sad. They have no contact with parents or siblings. They sleep under aluminum blankets on thin gym mats. They have not been able to shower for several days. They only see the sun and daylight for brief moments, if at all.

Reports from the camps on the border with Mexico paint a shocking picture of the situation of the thousands of unaccompanied children and youth who have been cared for by US authorities in recent weeks. So far, no journalists have been allowed into the camps. Instead, the testimonies come from human rights organizations that have interviewed some children and adolescents.

National Center Lawyers for Youth sounds the alarm, after last week’s conversation with a dozen kids at a camp in Texas, Donna. Children’s rights lawyer Leccia Welch told CNN that this is a humanitarian crisis.

The White House is happy to avoid such concepts.

It is true that the Biden Administration claims that the United States faces the largest wave of migrants in 20 years. In February alone, nearly 100,000 people were arrested trying to cross the border, an increase of nearly 30 percent in a month. Of particular concern are the alarms about the growing flow of unaccompanied children and youth.

But Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki prefers to speak of “a great challenge.”

These are formulations It evokes memories of the refugee crisis in Sweden in 2015, with all its convulsions in Swedish politics. Central politician Joe Biden should be able to avoid being forced to pitch as hard as his colleagues in Europe.

He was vice president when the Obama administration carried out the deportations and placed the migrants in custody at the border. His electoral promises have been primarily about how he wants to give the undocumented the opportunity to become citizens of the United States. In a signature compromise, he decided not to demolish or build on Trump’s wall against Mexico. He has repeatedly made clear that border crossings must be kept safe. But he has also vowed to introduce a more humane immigration policy, reunite divided families, and ensure that it is possible to seek asylum in the United States.

Possibly it is precisely the care about the children and youth who created the problems at the border. In the wake of the pandemic, then-President Donald Trump decided that all migrants should be rejected outright for public health reasons. In principle, the Biden administration has adhered to those regulations, but with the exception of minors who cross the border without their parents.

Now, the number of unaccompanied children and youth is increasing dramatically. Information in the US media varies, but according to CBS News, up to 13,000 unaccompanied minors are now in the custody of US authorities. The idea is for children to be moved quickly from the tent camps to better housing, but the lack of space is crying out and disaster authority Fema has been called in to help with transportation and accommodation.

In the midst of misery, the game takes over about power speed. Republicans, who are aiming to regain a majority in Congress in the 2022 midterm elections, will seize every opportunity to make immigration a contentious issue in American politics. Tighter control of immigration policy unites the phalanxes of the otherwise divided party. The right also wants to change the focus of the pandemic, where the Biden administration has just launched a popular support package and accelerated vaccines.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke of a heartbreaking crisis when he visited the Mexican border earlier this week with a delegation of Republicans. “The sad thing about all this is that it didn’t have to happen,” he said. And former President Donald Trump is trying to paint a situation in which migrants from all over the world are arriving in the United States.

“They will destroy our country if we do nothing about it,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Primetime this week.

United States in March 2021 is not a country with open borders. Trumplägret’s hype will be a repeat of the 2016 election campaign, when tighter control over increased immigration was seen as a winning issue. Trump’s zero tolerance led to controversial family separations. However, pressure on the border increased during his tenure. Perhaps people tried to seize the last chance to embark on the dangerous journey to the United States, before the wall came into place.

The question now is, instead, whether Joe Biden has contributed to false hope. The president and his staff prefer to point out the underlying drivers of the flows to the United States: poverty, violence, corruption and oppression in countries such as Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, and now also the devastation caused by various hurricanes and difficulties during the pandemic. .

– I heard the other day that they come because they know I’m a good guy. The thing is, they don’t, Biden told ABC News Tuesday night.

He also sent a tough message directly to migrants: don’t come here.

The president wants people You will have to wait and be patient while the White House tries to launch a new immigration policy. But his message does not seem to have reached him. Perhaps he was simply toppled by cynical refugee traffickers in Central America.

In the New York Times, desperate immigrants testify about how they had been tricked into believing that the borders were opened after the change in power.

– Joe Biden promised us, says a crying woman in the report.

Biden risks accusations about the betrayal of more sectors. While the right wants to paint the newly elected president who gave in, the left fears more. Progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have harshly criticized the handling of children at the camp.

The situation at the border could also make it difficult for the president to fulfill his electoral promises on migration. This week, the House of Representatives in Congress agreed to strengthen protection for farm workers temporarily in the United States and create pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children. These are bills that can face strong opposition in the Senate.

CNN analyst Stephen Collinson sums up the situation: The White House may be reluctant to talk about a crisis on the Southwest border, but for the new president, the situation has quickly turned into “a political emergency.”

For all the children and young people who now have to be forced into camps on the border, in difficult conditions, without their parents, in a new country in the middle of a pandemic, perhaps we can also use the word “disaster.”