NBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff said Monday on ABC’s “The View” that it was “disingenuous” to say the surge of unaccompanied children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is “some kind of national security crisis.”
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked, “President Biden just got into office, like, 61 days ago. He has had to deal with the aftermath of an insurrection. He had to do the once-in-a-lifetime world pandemic thing, and now he’s getting a whole bunch of flak for not having the entire border situation figured out and on point. Do you think it’s a little unrealistic for folks to expect that he’s going to have all the answers, especially since he’s cleaning up yet another mess left by the guy from before? Or should they have been more prepared?”
Soboroff said, “You know, it is unrealistic. Do I think that President Biden would be able to do what they say they want to do, create a fair and safe and humane, and orderly immigration process after four years of the cruelty of the Trump administration, and let’s be honest, after decades of bipartisan Democratic and Republican deterrence-based, punitive-based immigration policy that treated immigrants, asylum seekers especially as criminals in the course of 61 days as you said, or however many days it’s been, no, it’s just not logistically possible.”
He added, “I hear a lot of talk about, really disingenuous frankly about a crisis, some kind of national security crisis at the border. That is not what is happening at all. But we do have, and we should all recognize and say that it is a humanitarian crisis to keep children locked up in Border Patrol facilities. Even President Biden’s own Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Mayorkas, says it’s no place for a child and that really logistical challenge which has caused a backup in Border Patrol stations because the kids can’t get to the child welfare professionals in the Office of Refugee Resettlement fast enough. That has created, yet again, another humanitarian crisis like we saw under President Obama like we saw under President Trump worse than ever before, and on purpose because of the separation policy. Now here we are again under President Biden.”
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