As the crisis on the southern U.S. border continues to spiral out of control on President Joe Biden’s watch, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made an unprecedented move in an attempt to deal with the skyrocketing number of illegal migrant children currently being detained.
According to Fox News, on Friday, Mayorkas revealed that he’s placing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in charge of taking care of the thousands of unaccompanied minors that have been captured crossing the border as part of a “government-wide effort” to gain control of the situation.
FEMA’s role
As of this writing, the Biden administration still refuses to admit that the situation at the border is a “crisis,” but now that Mayorkas took steps to involve FEMA, some are saying that the administration is finally admitting that there is a problem, even if they won’t use the “c-word” to describe it.
“By doing that they’re admitting there is a crisis even though they won’t say it,” said Rep. John Katko (R-NY), the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.
FEMA’s role will include the mission to “safely receive, shelter and transfer unaccompanied children” coming across the southern U.S. border, with Mayorkas adding that the agency “is now integrated and co-located with HHS to look at every available option to quickly expand physical capacity for appropriate lodging.”
“Our goal is to ensure that unaccompanied children are transferred to HHS as quickly as possible, consistent with legal requirements and in the best interest of the children,” Mayorkas said in a statement.
As the New York Post reported, the move came just days after Mayorkas reportedly called for “volunteers” from other agencies to help with the “overwhelming” surge of migrants coming across the border.
Out of control
Within the past two weeks, the number of unaccompanied minor children in custody has tripled to a staggering 3,250, adding to the exploding illegal immigration crisis that ended with over 100,000 migrants caught by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in the month of February alone.
The situation with illegal minors has surged to such extreme levels that the Biden administration is scrambling to find appropriate housing for them, including recent news that they’re exploring the possibility of using American military bases and a NASA facility for housing them.
The COVID-19 pandemic on top of the influx of illegal immigrants has made the crisis much worse, as facilities have been above capacity for weeks now, not to mention the fact that there’s still not much data on how many of the migrants are testing positive for the virus.
Republicans and other critics in the media of Biden’s approach to the border crisis blame the new president for rolling back so many of former President Donald Trump’s immigration-related policies that helped prevent these types of crises from happening in the first place.
Only time will tell how this border crisis ends up, but if the White House is already tasking FEMA with such a massive undertaking and calling for volunteers, it’s not a stretch to presume that it will become increasingly worse before it gets better.
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