WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats who have long blunted the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies are suddenly in a tight political bond.
The Biden government is responding to a wave of children crossing the southern border into the U.S. with some of the same tactics that evoked the Democrats’ moral outrage when former President Donald Trump embraced them. This includes hastily accommodating children in makeshift jails, leading Republicans to argue that it is now Democrats who put “children in cages”.
The moment leaves many Democrats with few good options. There is little appetite to condemn President Joe Biden on the same terms as Trump. After all, Biden is pushing for massive immigration reform this includes valuable goals, such as a path to citizenship for millions, and speaks of the need to treat those who enter the United States with compassion.
But by taking a more lenient stance, Democrats and immigration advocates also run the risk of being labeled as hypocrites by the Republican Party.
“I decided not to allow myself to get into my feelings about how these detention centers are still being opened by this administration because it makes me very, very angry,” said Amanda Elise Salas, a Democratic political operative in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, who worked for Biden’s presidential campaign.
Salas said he understands “that change comes in increments” and that Democrats don’t have enough seats in Congress to make Biden’s immigration agenda an immediate reality. But she added: “It doesn’t make any sense as we are not looking at it in a radical way.”
Trump expanded and strengthened border walls while defending “zero tolerance” policies that made it difficult to seek asylum in the United States and even briefly separated immigrant parents and children.
Biden used executive actions to start reversing much of it, but a comprehensive plan he announced on his first day in office to redo the immigration system was stalled in Congress. Instead, the Democratic-controlled House on Thursday passed two smaller-scale bills that offer a process for obtaining US citizenship for immigrants brought into the country illegally as children and extending legal status to farm workers and your families.
Both initiatives gained some support from the Republican Party, helping their chances in a 50-50 Senate split. But Republicans have also signaled that they see continuing to hammer Biden on border issues as a winner towards the 2022 midterm elections.
The number of immigrants detained on the southern border of the United States increased to almost 100,000 in February alone. Enough of these were children without parents that the Biden government reopened a Trump administration facility in remote Carrizo Springs, Texas, to house them.
Officials also plan to send hundreds more miles north to a converted space within the Dallas Convention Center..
Biden’s supporters note that what is happening on the border now is not the same as during the Trump years. His criticisms of the Trump administration focused on children separated from their parents and kept in Border Patrol facilities with cells divided by wire fences.
In addition, the Biden government continues to quickly send back the majority of single adults and families that federal agents stop at the border under a public health order issued by Trump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. It is just allowing teenagers and children to be on their own – at least temporarily – which helped to increase their ranks.
Even so, this nuance is easily lost in the broader political struggle. And Republicans, looking to retaliate after Biden successfully fulfilled his promised $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package, were quick to attack.
“This is a human chagrin,” said California MP Kevin McCarthy, the main Republican in the House, after visiting a border facility in El Paso, Texas, this week. “This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration.”
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is organizing his own trip to the border, said the Biden government, “in fact, has issued an invitation for unaccompanied children to come to this country.”
Democrats retort by claiming that real hypocrisy occurs among Republicans, who now pretend to be concerned about immigrant children after years of applauding Trump’s tougher policies. They say that part of the increase was caused by immigrants who were stranded at the border waiting to present legitimate asylum claims that the Trump administration was unable to prosecute.
“They are having to pick up the pieces of a system in shambles because of Donald Trump,” said former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro of the Biden government.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was irritated due to suggestions that the southern border is in crisis, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki tried to avoid using the term.
His efforts to contain the Republicans’ message were complicated by Biden himself, however. It discourages men, women and children who are ready to move to the border with the United States from Mexico, Central America and elsewhere, in the hope of being able to cross more easily onto American soil.
“Don’t leave your city, town or community,” said Biden during a recent interview with ABC, pleading for more time as his government works to find long-term solutions at the border.
But that request runs counter to traditional standards, which generally see the number of immigrants increase when temperatures rise.
“The reality is that people – including women and children – are forced to migrate and have been coming seasonally,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “It’s not like they came now because Biden was elected. They come every year at this time, when the weather pattern changes. “
Hincapie applauded the Biden government’s use of Federal Emergency Management Agency officials to manage the influx of immigrants in more humane and healthier ways. But for Salas, Biden’s comments reflected a misunderstanding about life on the US-Mexico border, which covers most members of both parties.
“We are not focused on the right things,” she said.
In fact, the Biden government admitted it was difficult to send mixed messages to immigrants.
“Sometimes it is difficult to convey hope for the future and the danger that is now,” said Roberta Jacobson, the coordinator of the Biden government for the southern border, during a press conference at the White House last week.
“We are trying to convey to everyone in the region that we will have lawsuits for people in the future, and we are raising them as soon as we can,” added Jacobson. “But at the same time, you cannot leave by irregular means. … Most people will be sent outside the United States. “
Meanwhile, amid growing Republican criticism, Biden has largely avoided attacks from his party’s progressive wing. One of its main public faces, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, tweeted about the reopening of the Trump era facilities in Carrizo Springs: the party . “
But she also added that “our unfair and charged immigration system will not be transformed” overnight.
Supporters who defended Biden’s broader immigration reform proposal also refrained from criticizing the president for not having approved it. Instead, many are excited about the progress of minor reforms.
“There is not just a lever that you should push, or an all-or-nothing legislative approach,” said Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for FWD.us, which defends the rights of immigrants. “And that doesn’t mean you don’t have to continue to advocate for a broader approach.”