After trying to minimize the fact that apprehensions at the US-Mexico border are reaching historic highs, President Joe Biden's administration is now faced with an influx of Haitian asylum seekers who have already entered Texas. It must accept that "containment" has failed, and change course.
MEXICO CITY – Since the first days of Joe Biden’s presidency, his administration has insisted that the growing number of migrants being apprehended at the US-Mexico border is not a “crisis,” but rather a normal, seasonal spike. US officials have even argued that the controversy was concocted entirely by former President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
While the Biden administration was not totally wrong about Trump, reality has since rebutted its claims. The situation on the border today is indeed a crisis, both for the United States and Mexico. As of late September, some 15,000 migrants and asylum seekers, most of them Haitian, are sheltering from the sun under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. They have brought the migration issue roaring back to the fore.
All summer, US immigration authorities waited for the numbers at the border to fall, but they kept rising, even as the excruciating heat kicked in. Monthly apprehensions topped 200,000 in July and again in August – their highest level since 2000. The sudden appearance of thousands of Haitians on the American side of the border (rather than in the Mexican towns of Matamoros, Reynosa, or Tijuana to the south) demonstrates that the flow is not easing.
MEXICO CITY – Since the first days of Joe Biden’s presidency, his administration has insisted that the growing number of migrants being apprehended at the US-Mexico border is not a “crisis,” but rather a normal, seasonal spike. US officials have even argued that the controversy was concocted entirely by former President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
While the Biden administration was not totally wrong about Trump, reality has since rebutted its claims. The situation on the border today is indeed a crisis, both for the United States and Mexico. As of late September, some 15,000 migrants and asylum seekers, most of them Haitian, are sheltering from the sun under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. They have brought the migration issue roaring back to the fore.
All summer, US immigration authorities waited for the numbers at the border to fall, but they kept rising, even as the excruciating heat kicked in. Monthly apprehensions topped 200,000 in July and again in August – their highest level since 2000. The sudden appearance of thousands of Haitians on the American side of the border (rather than in the Mexican towns of Matamoros, Reynosa, or Tijuana to the south) demonstrates that the flow is not easing.