The Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, has defended this Sunday that the reception of unaccompanied minors promoted by the White House is a measure consistent with the “values of the country”, although he has pointed out that it does not imply a policy of ‘ open doors’ that allows the indiscriminate entry of migrants through Mexico.
“What we are not going to do is expel orphaned children to the desert,” Mayorkas said in comments to the NBC network’s Meet the Press program, amid criticism from the Republican Party of the opening intentions demonstrated by the president of the United States. , Joe Biden.
Mayorkas has made these comments after the closed-door visit he made last Friday to a juvenile center in El Paso, Texas, in which the two Republican state senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both staunch supporters of the closure, were absent. of borders imposed by the last Trump Administration.
The United States registered a significant increase in arrivals during the month of February, including 18,945 family members, an increase of 168 percent from the previous month, according to data from the Pew Research Center. That same February, more than 9,600 unaccompanied minors entered the border, three times more than last year.
This Saturday, the Axios news portal reported that the Biden Administration had awarded contracts worth 86 million dollars for the reception in hotels of 1,200 people and the ‘Washington Post’ advanced that the United States border authorities are considering transporting some of the minors to states on the border with Canada.
“Juvenile centers are not a place for a child,” Mayorkas later told CNN’s State of the Union program. “We will not abandon our values and our principles, we will not abandon the needs of vulnerable children.
Later, in an interview with the conservative Fox News, Mayorkas pointed out that this practice is not going to replace in any way the need to configure a “safe and orderly immigration system.” “It takes time because Trump dismantled the whole system,” he added.
In this sense, Mayorkas has insisted to the ABC chain that the border is not a place of entry without restrictions. “The message is quite clear: do not come. The border is closed, the border is safe. We encourage children not to come. Now is not the time to come. The trip is dangerous,” he said.
MORE THAN 15,000 MINORS RETAINED
The United States Customs and Border Protection service holds more than 5,000 unaccompanied minor migrants, which represents an increase of more than half a thousand in recent days, according to documentation that the CNN chain has had access to. To these should be added the almost 10,500 that are in accommodations of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Among the detainees there are more than 600 minors who have been detained for more than ten days, which would be causing the overflow of the body, already affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Administration of President Joe Biden has accused former President Donald Trump of “completely dismantling” the asylum system and eliminating existing “legal avenues” for children in vulnerable situations to reach the United States.
He has also been ugly at the cut in aid to Central American countries and recalled that the region was affected at the end of 2020 by two powerful hurricanes. Given this situation, Washington predicts that the number of migrants trying to arrive from Mexico is on the way to reaching unprecedented levels in the last two decades.
