President Joe Biden referred to the situation at the southern border as a "crisis" for the first time over the weekend, Fox News reported.
He made the comments to reporters after playing golf as part of his defense of his administration’s walkback on refugee policy.
"We’re going to increase the number [of refugees]," he told reporters. "The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people. We couldn’t do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number."
Until Biden’s comments, his administration has been refusing to call the large increase in migrant numbers a "crisis," instead referring to the situation as a "challenge" and blaming it on the Trump administration’s dismantling of asylum paths.
As just one example, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last month that the personnel in his department “are working around the clock seven days a week to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border - that we manage the challenge, as acute as the challenge is."
However, as pointed out in The Sara Carter Show, there has been a record number of unaccompanied minors showing up at the southern border since March, with almost 1,000 migrants crossing into the United States undetected every day, according to Border Patrol officials.
The Sara Carter Show also suggested that this admission of a crisis might mean that Vice President Kamal Harris, who has served as head of the response to the situation at the border, might finally take a trip to assess the situation there or at least hold her first press conference on the subject.
Biden was harshly criticized by fellow Democrats on Friday when he signed an emergency presidential determination to maintain the number of refugees for Fiscal Year 2021 capped at 15,000, the same level set by the Trump administration, while changing the regional allocation of who is brought in, according to Fox News.
The president had said in February that he would boost the cap to 125,000 for FY 2022 which starts in October, and that he would work together with Congress to make a "down payment" on that number.
A few hours after many in his own party reacted furiously to his emergency presidential determination, Biden changed course, blaming "confusion" on behalf of the press and promising to increase the number of refugees by the middle of next month.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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