Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has claimed that the number of people looking to enter the U.S. at the sourthern border could be the highest in 20 years, but in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” he claimed that this is because of the Trump administration’s actions, not policy changes that took place in the early days of President Biden‘s administration.
Biden has scrapped a number of Trump’s policies which included having asylum seekers remain in Mexico instead of staying in the U.S. while they wait for their cases to be heard. Mayorkas denied that Biden’s changes have encouraged the current migrant surge.
“What we are seeing is the result of President Trump’s dismantlement of the safe and orderly immigration processes that were built over many, many years by presidents of both parties,” Mayorkas said. “That’s what we are seeing, and that’s why it’s taking time for us to execute our plans to administer the humanitarian claims of vulnerable children. That’s what this is about.”
Addressing the elimination of the remain in Mexico policy, Mayorkas said the Biden administration has replaced this “with a safe and orderly triage system working with our partners in Mexico and humanitarian organizations in the international space and we are not expelling vulnerable children.”
The secretary also defended Biden’s elimination of Trump’s “safe third country” agreements which required migrants to seek asylum in another country first if they were passing through a safe country on their way to the U.S. He claimed that “there’s nothing safe about” sending people back “to the very countries from which they are fleeing persecution.”- READ MORE
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