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The strategies, which administration officials outlined Monday, reflect the growing pressure on President Biden and his advisers to slow the increase in illegal crossings that has accelerated since he took office. Biden is navigating sometimes competing demands: pleas from border lawmakers to more aggressively dissuade would-be migrants, and exhortations from human rights advocates to treat them humanely.
The sharpest challenge is how to deal with thousands of children taken into custody under a policy of not turning away unaccompanied minors. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) on Monday released photographs of a temporary border tent in Donna, Tex., where children were placed in crowded areas divided by clear partitions, some huddled under foil blankets on modest bedding.
The photos echoed criticism faced by former president Donald Trump for his handling of children at the border, though administration officials said the current conditions are far more humane. “The system is being overwhelmed right now,” Cuellar said. “No ifs, no buts about it.”
Although the administration’s message “has been changed,” Cuellar said, with more emphasis on declaring that the border is not open, “they’ve got to do more to overcome the messages you hear in Central America” from smugglers emphasizing purportedly lax enforcement. The congressman urged the Biden team to promote images of people being turned away at the border.
Other lawmakers who have witnessed the border situation also voiced serious concerns Monday. “In general, I saw a situation that was spiraling out of control,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who visited the border last week.
The administration’s search for answers comes as the border surge threatens to become an ever-greater logistical and political crisis. Biden’s team has often seemed on the defensive regarding the border, quickly relaxing Trump’s hard-line policies, but struggling to take control of the influx, after border arrests and detentions went up to some of the highest levels in a decade at the end of the Trump presidency. Biden is likely to face an array of questions on the border at his first formal news conference on Thursday.
During a closed-door virtual retreat with Democratic senators on Monday evening, Biden was pressed on the issue by at least one member of his own party, according to officials familiar with the discussion.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) asked the president what the administration’s timeline was for…
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