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WHITE HOUSE: WE DON’T INTEND TO SEPARATE MIGRANT FAMILIES, EVEN IF THAT’S WHAT WE’RE DOING. The surge of would-be migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is growing larger and larger. Many of those illegal crossers are unaccompanied minors, mostly in their early-to-mid teens. The Biden administration has adopted a policy of allowing all of them to stay in the United States. While some adults and families are returned to Mexico, all of the minors stay.
That has spurred some families to send children unaccompanied on the hazardous journey to the United States — in other words, for those families to separate themselves. On March 21, I wrote that the Biden policy was “creating [a] powerful incentive for would-be migrant families to self-separate.” On March 31, I wrote that “Biden’s policy has given those families a clear incentive to self-separate in the interest of at least getting their children inside the United States.”
U.S. officials have acknowledged that is what is happening. “What we are seeing, more and more, is the families are self-separating in Mexico,” Brian Hastings, who is a top Border Patrol official in Texas, told CNN last week.
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The result of Biden’s policy is separated families. And this is from a president and administration officials who bitterly protested President Donald Trump’s (brief) policy of separating families. For a short period, Trump separated migrant families before, in response to protest, re-uniting most of them. Biden is encouraging families to separate themselves.
Now, the White House says the family self-separations are an “unintended consequence” of the president’s policy — but that the policy will not change. “I don’t think we have any intention to rethink our approach,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday. Here is the full text of an exchange on the topic at the White House briefing:
QUESTION: And some of your own administration’s immigration experts — officials, I’m sorry — have said that some migrant families are, in their words, “self-separating” at the border and sending their kids across alone because they know that unaccompanied minors are not going to be turned away. Is it time to rethink that policy because of these unintended consequences and the way people are kind of taking advantage of it?
PSAKI: Well, you’re right. That certainly is an unintended consequence. And we have been clear and we have continued to convey the message that our border is not open, that it is a treacherous journey. And even as families are doing that, a number of these kids are still in — taking a very dangerous journey, even for a shorter period of time — or distance, I guess I should say. But I don’t have any — I don’t think we have any intention to rethink our approach to treating kids humanely and ensuring that they are safe when they cross the border.
Biden has presented his policy in moral terms. At his March 25 news conference, the president said, “Well, look, the idea that I’m not going to say — which I would never do — ‘if an unaccompanied child ends up at the border, we’re just going to let him starve to death and stay on the other side’ — no previous administration did that either, except Trump. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it.”
But the fact is, regardless of intentions, the Biden border policy is separating families — the same end result of the hated and much-derided Trump policy. Why wouldn’t the administration rethink its approach?
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