President Biden is facing pressure from all sides as migration swells at the southern border — posing one of the first major policy tests for …
President Biden is facing pressure from all sides as migration swells at the southern border — posing one of the first major policy tests for his administration. Progressives have hit Biden officials over reopening a housing facility for young migrants used briefly during the Trump administration. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and others argue the facilities are inhumane and represent a step backward for the new administration, which has made a point to distance itself from the Trump era on immigration in particular. Conservatives, meanwhile, say Biden’s approach has encouraged increased migration to the southern border, with former President Trump joining the chorus of critics in a speech on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). But Biden officials and immigration advocates are urging patience, arguing the new administration will need time to make meaningful changes to a system that was upended over the last four years. “Putting in place policies to manage the situation in an orderly way is absolutely the correct approach and I think they’ve done everything they can to communicate clearly and unambiguously about the direction they’re headed and what it’s going to take to get there,” said Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Biden met virtually with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday, and the two discussed the situation at the border. At a White House press briefing that same day, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asked for patience, saying the Biden administration inherited a deep well of problems. “It takes time to build out of the depths of cruelty that the administration before us established,” Mayorkas said. “What we are seeing now at the border is the immediate result of the dismantlement of the system and the time that it takes to rebuild it virtually from scratch.” Biden campaigned against Trump’s immigration policies, and he moved swiftly to halt construction of the border wall and rescind policies that prevented many migrants from entering or remaining in the United States. But the new president is quickly finding that immigration remains a difficult issue to solve, particularly amid a global pandemic.
