The southern border CPB encountered 100,441 migrants in February
On Saturday, nine senators sent a letter to the Biden admin of their disappointment in how he has handled the increase of migrants coming into the southern border. They are demanding more “clarity.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Member Chuck Grassley, guided the letter which was signed by Republican committee members Sens. Marsha Blackburn, Thom Tillis, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Mike Lee, Tom Cotton, and John Kennedy.
“Regardless of what the Biden Administration wants to call this current set of circumstances it has created, this surge in illegal immigration carries significant risks,” the senators wrote to the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. “It also imposes a heavy burden on public resources.”
The senators also said that “Congress and the American people must have additional clarity about how DHS and HHS are addressing” the problem at the border.
There were 30,077 border removals last year in February 2020. February of this year, Customs and Border Patrol have had 100,441 migrants at the southern border — a 28% surge compared to January 2021 — and carried out 72,113 removals.
Around 9,500 unattended minors are in HHS custody while about 4,500 have been waiting to be processed at CBP facilities, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.
CBP cannot remove children under the U.S. law, so they will be placed and held at facilities like the one in northeast El Paso, which already has a capacity of 1,040 migrants. The El Paso facility and others at the southern border are filling up to their max capacity, creating overcrowded conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic as the Biden administration works to find more space and resources for those coming to the border.
“Catch-and-release policies pose additional risks to public health in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” the senators wrote. “The Biden Administration has expressed a purported commitment to ending the pandemic; however, news reports suggest that it now plans to keep some who are apprehended by DHS personnel in custody for just 72 hours before releasing them into American communities.”
On Friday, Mayorkas visited an El Paso CBP facility, where he received a briefing “on the processing, shelter, and transfer of unaccompanied children,” along with a bipartisan group of senators, according to DHS, He did not speak to the press.
Republicans have alleged that Biden’s immediate rollback of Trump-era policies created the current increase of migrants at the border.
Trump critics say that the former president’s “Remain in Mexico” policy put migrants seeking U.S. citizenship in direct danger of trafficking and violence in that country.
The nine senators are asking for more information from DHS and HHS, including a breakdown of the number of migrants detained since Jan. 20, the number of migrants that have been tested and vaccinated for COVID-19, an estimate of how much time they spend in CBP custody before and after testing, and future border removal projections.
Also more than 40 House Republicans also sent a letter to Beccera on Friday claiming to have”extreme concern” over the high number of unattended minors turning up at the border.
A number of GOP lawmakers have decided to travel to the southern border and see for themselves the severity of the situation. Blackburn is going to Arizona on Sunday to “get the facts and see the crisis firsthand,” she has said in a statement.