Currents News Staff
In a tent city near the U.S.-Mexico border, Lijia Giselle Amador Zavala waits with her two children. She says she left Honduras nine months ago to seek asylum in the United States.
Lijia says she jumped the border two times illegally because of desperation to find work and both times she was sent back to Mexico. Now she says she’ll wait for a legal way to cross.
The anticipation spreading through this tent city in Tijuana, Mexico speaks to the hope these migrants have that the Biden administration will be more receptive to their plights. But the increasing surge of migrants on the southern border is reaching emergency levels for the administration.
U.S. authorities have arrested and encountered more than 100,000 migrants in the four weeks before March 3 – the highest levels for that same time period in at least five years.
New data shows there are more than 3,400 unaccompanied children in the custody of Customs and Border Protection and federal immigration officials are scrambling to make room.
Temporary processing site for migrants was opened just over a month ago and a Homeland Security official says the facility is “significantly overcrowded” mostly with children.
Republicans and some Democrats say the Biden administration isn’t moving fast enough to keep the migration crisis under control.
“They are completely unprepared for what is going on at the border now and they’re going to be even more unprepared for what will be happening in the coming months,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The Biden Administration says the majority of migrants are being turned away at the border and refuse to describe the situation as a crisis.
“Look, I don’t think we need to sit here and put new labels on what we have already conveyed is challenging,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “What we have conveyed is a top priority for the president.”