Asylum-seeking migrant families and unaccompanied minors from Central America take refuge in a makeshift U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing center under the Anzalduas International Bridge in Texas, U.S., March 12, 2021. /Reuters
The United States is facing the biggest surge of migrants at its southwestern border in 20 years, the Homeland Security secretary said on Tuesday as the Biden administration races to handle an influx of children trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border alone.
The number of attempted border crossings by people from Central America and Mexico has steadily increased since April 2020 and most single adults and families are being turned away, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.
Poverty and violence in Mexico and the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – have led people to seek a better life in the United States for years, and there have been surges in the past.
Conditions there have continued to deteriorate and two hurricanes made living conditions even worse, while the coronavirus pandemic complicated the border situation, Mayorkas said in a statement.
"We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years," he said.
Asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors hold hands amid adult migrants from Central America as they await transport in Penitas, Texas, U.S., March 12, 2021. /Reuters
U.S. border agents conducted 100,441 apprehensions or expulsions of migrants at the border with Mexico in February, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said last week, the highest monthly total since a border crisis of 2019.
Single adults make up the majority of people who are being expelled, Mayorkas said. Children traveling alone, some as young as 6 years old, are not being turned back.
The government is creating a joint processing center to transfer the children promptly into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and is trying to find additional shelters for them, Mayorkas said in a statement.
President Joe Biden's administration has been struggling to speed up the processing of hundreds of youths under 18 who are crossing the southern border alone every day.
Republicans in Congress say the Biden administration sparked the border surge by promising to unwind some of former President Donald Trump's hardline policies against illegal immigration.
"It didn't have to happen. This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration," House of Representatives Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said at an El Paso border facility on Monday.