Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas blamed former President Donald Trump on Sunday’s “State of the Union” on CNN for the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Anchor Dana Bash asked, “The Biden administration, though, is, as you mentioned, now allowing unaccompanied children into the U.S., different from the Trump administration. Clearly, you don’t have the infrastructure to handle this many children right now. As I mentioned, more than 600 children have been in Border Protection custody for more than ten days, far longer than is acceptable and allowed by law. That’s three days. So, did you change the policy too quickly without having the infrastructure in place to take care of these children?”
Mayorkas said, “We will not abandon our values and our principles. We will not abandon the needs of young children. That’s what this is all about. We are executing on our plan. It does take time. It is difficult. Our plan includes the deployment of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, FEMA, to assist HHS in building its capacity more rapidly to shelter the children. But it is taking time, and it is difficult because the entire system was dismantled by the prior administration. There was a system in place in the Republican and Democratic administrations that was torn down during the Trump administration. That is why the challenge is more acute than it ever has been before.”
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