Sen. Joe Manchin is calling the migrant surge at the southern border a “crisis” despite the Biden administration’s refusal to do so.
The use of that word by the centrist Democrat from West Virginia aligns him with Republicans and is a break from the milder language preferred by the Biden administration.
“It’s a crisis. Oh, it’s a crisis,” Manchin told CNN.
When pressed by the media, the White House declined to call the surge a “disaster.”
“Does FEMA’s arrival at the border mean that the administration feels what is happening down at the border is a disaster?” Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday.
“I know that we always get into the fun of labels around here, but I would say our focus is on solutions, and this is one of the steps that the president felt would help not become a final solution but help expedite processing, help ensure that people who are coming across the border have access to health and medical care. Clearly, the numbers are enormous. This is a big challenge,” Psaki responded.
After Doocy outlined steps the administration has taken in response to the situation, including deploying the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help care for thousands of unaccompanied migrant teenagers and children, Psaki again declined to use the term to describe the circumstances at the southern border.
“FEMA is there to help ensure that the people who are at the border, who are coming across the border, have access to HHS and ORR shelters. That we can swiftly place them with vetted families. They’re playing a number of roles there to address what we feel is a significant problem and a significant challenge,” she said, adding, “We haven’t been hiding about that.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stuck to calling the U.S.-Mexico border situation a “challenge” earlier this month.
“The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security 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,” he said on March 1.
Republicans prefer stronger language in describing the situation, with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott faulting the Biden administration for the “crisis.”
“The crisis at our southern border continues to escalate because of Biden administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration,” he said. “Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy led a group of 13 House Republicans to the border on Monday in an effort to call attention to the issue.
“It’s more than a crisis. This is human heartbreak,” McCarthy said from El Paso, Texas. “It didn’t have to happen. This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration.”
Federal officials say more than 100,000 migrants were encountered at the border in February, and reports indicate an unprecedented 117,000 migrant children are set to enter the United States by the end of the year.
As the border surge consumes federal resources and Republican attention, the House is expected to consider two Democratic-led immigration bills this week. Separately, Biden has proposed immigration reform legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants.
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Representatives for Manchin did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
