The United Nations is reportedly helping the Biden Administration find more asylum-seeking migrants to get back into the United States after they were removed to Mexico or Central America to await asylum processing under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols. President Joe Biden canceled the program after taking office on January 21.
“Hundreds of migrants signed up on Friday within hours of the launch of a U.N. website that allows migrants with active cases to register remotely to be processed at the U.S.-Mexico border,” Reuters reported. “The United States and the United Nations are evaluating the locations of migrants and costs associated with possible flights and land transportation within Mexico.”
U.N.’s International Organization for Migration in Mexico Chief of Mission Dana Graber Ledek told Reuters, “Nothing is in place yet. Right now we’re still exploring all of the possibilities.”
The U.S. Department of State declined to respond to an inquiry from the news organization.
Reuters wrote that the United States, Mexico, and international organizations are scrambling to figure out how to register migrants, transport them to the border, test them for COVID-19, and “get them to their U.S. destinations.”
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) said their is “nothing compassionate” about the president’s open border initiatives that are bringing tens of thousands of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border, Breitbart’s John Binder reported.
“By ending the Migrant Protection Protocols, the Biden Administration is sending yet another signal that it is okay to come to this country unlawfully,” Rubio said.
He added:
I have tremendous compassion for the unimaginable conditions in which people live throughout our hemisphere, but there is nothing compassionate about President Biden’s approach. The result will be more chaos at our border, more lives exploited by evil human traffickers, and more illegal immigration.
The chaos is beginning to materialize in Mexico and Central America as government officials prepare to deal with a massive wave of extra-continental migrants seeking to make their way through these countries to the United States because of Biden administration policies, El Sol de Mexico reported on Monday.
Authorities in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, and Nicaragua are “determined not to allow the irregular entry of extra-continental migrants. Those include migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Asia, and Africa,” the article reports.
In the U.S., the Biden Administration is also having to deal with a rapidly growing number of unaccompanied minors being apprehended at the country’s southern border.
The newspaper continues:
Human smugglers working in the region have also been telling would-be migrants to attempt the journey now, saying the new administration would prove more lenient than its predecessor.
…
The Biden administration has also discontinued the practice of sending children back to Mexico or their home countries if they were traveling with an adult who wasn’t a parent. The change is in line with immigration law, which forbids the government from quickly deporting unaccompanied children—defined as any child not traveling with his or her parent. But the change has sent more children to HHS shelters as well.
The number of Unaccompanied Alien Children illegally crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S. is increasing from month to month, according to reports from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. In January 2021, Border Patrol agents apprehended 5,871 unaccompanied minors. This is up from 4,995 in December 2020 and 3,076 in January 2020.
The Wall Street Journal reports shelters for unaccompanied minors are running out of space. Congressional budget cuts slashed housing space for minors by 40 percent. The shelters are now 93 percent full.
Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, told the Journal, “They’ve seen very large growth in a very short period of time. The closer you get to 100% capacity, the harder the system is to manage.”
Health and Human Services officials opened an emergency shelter in Carrizo Springs, Texas, to house unaccompanied migrant children, the newspaper reported. The facility will hold up to 700 children.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s Sunday-morning talk show, What’s Your Point? Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX, Parler @BobPrice, and Facebook.
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