Joe Biden Prioritizes Migrant Youth ‘Educational Services’ as Many U.S. Children Are Shut Out of Classrooms

President Joe Biden’s administration is focused on “educational services” for migrant youth arriving at the United States-Mexico border even as millions of American children remain shut out of the classroom due to lockdowns.

In a press briefing on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration is working to “ensure” that Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) arriving at the southern border are provided “educational services” and “health services.”

“These unaccompanied children who come across the border … we want to keep safe; we want to ensure they are in shelters where there is access to educational services, legal services, health services,” Psaki said. “We want to ensure that they are then quickly moved to vetted families and sponsor homes.”

“We are not trying to close our borders,” Psaki said.

As of last week, Breitbart News reported, more than 3,300 UACs were in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody before they were eventually transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where they received a variety of taxpayer-funded services.

Simultaneously, potentially millions of American children remain shut out of the classroom and in-person learning as teacher’s unions fight to keep schools closed in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis.

In Los Angeles County, California, for instance, children in K-12th grade are set to have been locked out of in-person learning for a year, the New York Times reports:

It has been almost a year since the coronavirus pandemic virtually emptied public schools in Los Angeles and sent Shamael Al-Alim home to take classes from her bedroom.

She does not miss rising at 6 a.m. to catch a bus and a train to her high school. But there is so much that, at 17, she does miss: The prospect of an in-person prom and graduation. The history teacher who ran the social justice club. Pickup basketball in the gym after school — and the coach “who made everybody feel safe there.” A real senior year.

The latest data compiled by Education Week, which breaks down state-by-state school closures, shows there are still only six states — Florida, Iowa, Texas, Arkansas, West Virginia, and New Hampshire — that require in-person learning. All the states, except New Hampshire, require most schools to be open five days a week.

Meanwhile, California, Hawaii, Delaware, and Washington, DC, continue to have state orders in place that have kept schools partially closed for in-person learning. In various other states, in which there are no state orders, localities can decide whether or not to keep their schools closed.

A report in October 2020 revealed that up to three million American children went without any education for most of last year.

The statements from the Biden administration are the latest which draw comparisons between restrictions, testing, and quarantine rules for American citizens versus foreign nationals — specifically border crossers.

While millions of Americans remain under lockdown orders in a number of states, the Biden administration is releasing thousands of border crossers into the U.S. interior with no requirement that they test negative for the coronavirus. Even after border crossers test positive for coronavirus, they do not have to adhere to quarantine standards.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.