The White House is backtracking after President Joe Biden described the surge in migrant children arriving at the country’s southern border as a “crisis.”
His press secretary, Jen Psaki, was forced to clean up his remark on Monday after Biden diverted from the usual script over the weekend.
“The president does not feel children coming to our border, seeking refuge from violence, economic hardships, and other dire circumstances, is a crisis,” she said when asked about his comments.
“He does feel that the crisis in Central America, the direct circumstances that people are fleeing from, that that is a situation we need to spend our time, our effort on, and we need to address it if we are going to prevent more of an influx of migrants from coming in years to come,” she told reporters.
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For months, officials have taken pains to avoid using the term “crisis” as they have tried to play down the effects of the influx.
But on Saturday, Biden was asked about the problems, and a cap on refugees admitted to the United States, after playing a round of golf at the Wilmington Country Club in Delaware.
“We’re gonna increase the numbers,” he said. “The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people, and we couldn’t do two things at once. And now we’re going to increase the numbers.”
Problems at the border have dominated Biden’s first weeks in office. Last month, officials revealed there were more than 14,000 unaccompanied children in custody.
Republicans say the surge is a result of his campaign promises to undo President Donald Trump’s tough immigration policies.
As a result, administration officials have gone out of the way to describe the surge as a “challenge” rather than a crisis.
Psaki herself frequently had to parry questions of terminology.
“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,” she said last month when asked whether emergency workers arriving at the border made it a “disaster.”
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“Clearly, the numbers are enormous,” she said then. “This is a big challenge.”
