The Biden government, under attack for limiting press access to the southern border while an increase in the number of migrants overwhelms processing facilities, could adjust its much-criticized media policy later this week.
“I am sure that before the end of the week, the press will have access” at the border, said Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House’s Internal Security Committee, D-Miss., In an interview with MSNBC on Monday.
“Otherwise, it will be a problem,” said Thompson.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki lobbied on Monday about when reporters will be able to visit border facilities, suggesting that changes are coming.
“We are working on finalizing the details and I hope to have an update in the next few days,” said Psaki, adding that “we remain committed to transparency”.
White House spokesman Vedant Patel declined to comment on Thompson’s remarks or provide more clarity on Psaki’s response, but said “hopefully we will have updates in the next few days, as Jen mentioned.” Thompson’s office did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for additional comments.
The US border with Mexico has been hit by a wave of arriving immigrants, many of whom are unaccompanied children, in the two months since President Joe Biden took office. Biden has taken steps to reverse some of the hardline immigration policies put in place by former President Donald Trump’s government, as well as halt construction of the border wall.
But the thousands of people who attended reportedly overloaded Customs and Border Protection processing facilities, with almost all of them running out of capacity. On Sunday, nearly 16,000 migrant children were in US custody, NBC News reported.
Although the Biden government blamed Trump-era policies and vehemently refused to call the current situation a crisis, it also severely limited media access to facilities and border agents.
CBP officials told NBC that they were instructed to deny media requests for data on migrants and “hitchhike” with border agents. Press inquiries from local spokesmen about the situation are being sent to Washington for approval, NBC reported.
The government has also denied requests from several news organizations to examine border processing facilities where migrant children are being held. Instead, the government tried to carefully control the images and information coming out of the facility.
Getty Images photojournalist John Moore accessed Twitter to warn CBP to “stop blocking media access to its border operations”.
“I photographed CBP under Bush, Obama and Trump, but now – zero access is granted to the media,” said Moore. “Transparency is essential, even in a politicized environment.”
Moore and other journalists pointed out that the Trump administration allowed the press to visit these facilities, even when it faced intense criticism for its “zero tolerance” policy, which resulted in the separation of migrant children from their families.
On Sunday, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, said the coronavirus pandemic complicated government border operations. He also criticized the Trump administration for going against previously established immigration policies.
“There was a system in place in the Republican and Democratic governments that was overthrown during the Trump administration, which is why the challenge is more acute than ever,” said Mayorkas in CNN’s “State of the Union”.
Biden and his top officials have repeatedly asked migrants not to try to enter the United States, emphasizing that the border is “closed”.
But the new administration’s more humanitarian rhetoric, coupled with a recent push by Democrats to approve bipartisan immigration reforms, cast the U.S. in a more welcoming light after the Trump administration’s draconian approach.
Biden said on Sunday that he plans to visit the US-Mexico border “at some point”. He told reporters that there is “much more” that can be done to convince families to stop trying to cross the border, including giving people the option of applying for asylum in their home countries.
Biden on Thursday is expected to attend his first solo press conference as president.
Meanwhile, even Democratic lawmakers have warned of the condition of the facilities where the migrants are being held.
“I just left the border processing facility. Hundreds of children huddled in large open rooms,” tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., On Friday.
“In a corner, I fought back tears as a 13-year-old girl sobbed uncontrollably explaining through a translator how terrified she was of being separated from her grandmother and without her parents,” wrote Murphy.