U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in an effort to assist with the droves of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, has requested air support from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to send migrants to states near the Canadian border for processing, according to two officials with the Department of Homeland Security who spoke with The Washington Post.
CBP in an email to ICE said it was inundated with the number of migrants crossing the border in recent days — 1,000 members of families and unaccompanied minors crossed the Rio Grande Friday morning and another 1,000 have yet to be processed since Thursday night.
More than 100,400 people attempted to cross the U.S. border in February, a 28 percent increase since January, according to Troy Miller, Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
More than 9,400 of those stopped were unaccompanied minors, up from 5,800 in January, according to The New York Times.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been called in by the Biden administration to help handle the influx.
The Biden administration refuses to refer to the situation as a ''crisis.''
"We recognize this is a big problem. The last administration left us a dismantled and unworkable system and like any other problem, we are going to do everything we can to solve it," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week.
Republicans say the recent surge is due to Biden’s reversal of strict immigration policies implemented by former President Donald Trump. Biden, they say, has invited drug cartels and human traffickers to exploit the southern border by relaxing entry requirements.
The president in his first weeks in office stopped construction on the border wall and ordered a review of asylum processing at the border. He also created a task force to reunite migrant families who were separated at the border by Trump’s 2018 ''zero tolerance'' policy.
''I came down here because I heard of the crisis. It's more than a crisis, this is a human heartbreak,'' House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on March 15 during a press conference after touring the El Paso Central Processing Center in El Paso, Texas. ''The sad part about all this, didn't have to happen. This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration. There's no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.''
The House is set to take up two immigration bills that would create a pathway to citizenship for ''Dreamers,'' undocumented individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children, and farm workers.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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