President Biden is trying to right the White House’s scrambled message to migrants seeking to cross the United States-Mexico border.
Biden implored migrants not to travel north as his new administration struggles to manage the influx at the southern border, particularly of unaccompanied minors. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, for instance, has helped to turn the Dallas Convention Center into an immigration facility that can house up to 3,000 migrant teenagers.
“Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don’t come over… Don’t leave your town or city or community,” Biden told ABC News in an interview aired Tuesday.
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Biden also didn’t take responsibility for the surge, despite Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas earlier Tuesday predicting the U.S. was “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.” He did concede the uptick was worse than those experienced in both 2019 and 2020.
“The idea that Joe Biden said, ‘Come’ — because I heard the other day that they’re coming because they know I’m a nice guy,” Biden said. “Here’s the deal, they’re not.”
Mayorkas first veered from the White House’s script this month when he told migrants the U.S. wasn’t “saying don’t come.”
“We are saying don’t come now,” he told reporters in the press briefing room.
Biden’s border czar, southern border Ambassador Roberta Jacobson, then mistakenly said last week, “La frontera no esta cerrada” or “the border is not closed.” She, however, quickly corrected herself.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has been more consistent from the podium, but she’s fielded question after question about concerns the team’s missteps has only complicated its response to the escalating issue. She has specifically had to defend Biden for not personally addressing the situation, which his aides have declined to describe as a “crisis.”
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“Well, he did do an interview with Univision about two weeks ago and made that absolutely clear,” Psaki said last week. “I will note, however, that he is one of the voices; Ambassador Jacobson is one of the voices. There are a number of effective voices in the region, including leaders in the region.”
Yet Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told Reuters last week the U.S. needed to work with his country “to regulate the flow because this business can’t be tackled from one day to the next.”
“They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” he said, a description Psaki didn’t outright reject.
