A record number of unaccompanied children reached the U.S. border in March 2021, more than the last record set in March 2019. The surge left the Biden administration scrambling to find an immediate solution to house and care for the migrant children and families while balancing its long-term immigration agenda.
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden introduced a legislative framework that demonstrated that he would be taking a different approach to immigration issues than his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. Specifically, the U.S. Citizen Act of 2021 would provide an eight-year pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, with an expedited process for farmworkers and recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The bill also would expand refugee admissions, deploy technology to help patrol the border and offer funding to fight corruption and increase security in migrant communities in Central America to address the root causes of migration.
The plan takes a long-view approach to immigration and was seen as an about-face from the Trump administration’s hard-line approach to the border. Some conservatives say that policy signal is responsible for the surge at the border.
“You can’t help but notice that the administration changes, and there’s a surge,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) told Fox News.” Cassidy’s argument mirrored that of other conservatives who criticized the Biden administration for rolling back Trump-era immigration policies before implementing strategies to help control a border surge.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, initially downplayed the crisis, arguing that migration trends are cyclical. The COVID-19 pandemic and several natural disasters, the White House said, also have caused people to flee Central America in greater numbers.
“It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March,” Biden said during a press conference in March.
Amid the rising influx of migrants, however, the Biden administration defaulted to older policies to manage the border population, detaining children in camps and using Title 42, a Trump-era authority, to expel adults and families arriving at the border because of the ongoing public health crisis. Advocates criticized the Biden administration after media reports showed subpar living conditions and cramped quarters in detention facilities, a major concern during the pandemic when social distancing is a necessary public health measure.
Following the call for more humane solutions, the administration announced plans to create more housing for migrant children in stadiums, churches and summer camps throughout the U.S. That didn’t stop some lawmakers, advocates and law enforcement officials from questioning whether the Biden administration actually had a plan to handle the situation.
“The policymakers came in with a policy change but then had no plan in place to implement that plan,” Joe Frank Martinez, sheriff of Val Verde County, Texas, told CNN. “People are going to continue to come in mass numbers, people are going to die, but something has to be done quick.”
While human rights activists and lawmakers continued to push for more humane solutions to handle the increasing number of people at the border, others advocated for a greater emphasis on addressing the problem at its roots. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called on its member organizations to increase aid for Central American countries, demonstrating a similar strategy to that of the Biden administration’s long-term immigration policy.
“Central American families aren’t migrating — they are fleeing,” Jean Gough, UNICEF’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, told the New York Times. “The best way to give migrant families a good reason to stay in their communities is to invest in their children’s future at the local level. The real child crisis is not at the U.S. border, it’s in the poorest communities of northern Central America and Mexico.”
The Biden administration also continued to push for solutions that would slow the rate of arrivals by appealing to parents of migrant children not to allow their kids to migrate to the U.S, especially given the dangers that children could face along the way. “You should not send your kids on this treacherous journey,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing. “There’s a lot of issues and steps we need to take to address root causes.”
For more background, see the March 2021 issue of Congressional Digest on “ICE Detention.”
