White House's border crisis

White House's Miller blames Democrats for border crisis

By TED HESSON

White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller bashed Democrats on Tuesday for not repealing laws and overriding court rulings that he said encourage Central American migrants to seek refuge in the United States.

Miller's rare on-the-record briefing appeared an attempt to contain damage from President Donald Trump's tweet over the holiday weekend that Democrats are to blame for family separations at the border. The claim was characterized widely in the press as a blatant falsehood.

In a telephonic briefing with reporters, Miller and other senior administration officials ticked off a series of legal changes that they said would quell the recent increase in migrant traffic at the southwest border.

The administration has pushed Congress to pass legislation that would allow the swift removal of unaccompanied minors from Central America, permit longer detentions of families arrested at the border and tighten standards for asylum claims.

“If we were to have those fixes in federal law, the migrant crisis emanating from Central America would largely be solved in a very short period of time,” Miller said. “Families would then therefore be able to be kept together and could be sent home expeditiously and safely.”

One incontestable truth amid many claims of varying accuracy is a recent increase in the number of people caught trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. That number plummeted after Trump took office in January 2017 but has climbed in recent months. In April, Border Patrol agents arrested 38,234 people, a figure more than three times the number during the same month a year earlier.

With the increased arrests, the Trump administration ratcheted up its immigration crackdown.

Earlier this month, administration officials announced that the Department of Homeland Security would refer all people suspected of crossing the border illegally to the Justice Department for prosecution, a controversial move that will increase instances of parents being separated from children.

At the same time, House Republicans embarked on an intense debate over how to address immigration in the run-up to the November midterm elections.

“Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border into the U.S.,” the president tweeted Saturday. “Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.”

But the new policy to prosecute all suspected border-crossers — and therefore separate more families — came directly from Trump's own administration.

Devin O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman, recapped the policy changes during the call with reporters Tuesday. O’Malley told reporters that based on a policy directed by DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen roughly three weeks ago, DHS and DOJ have begun “in a scaleable manner” to refer more people suspected of crossing illegally.

Suspected crossers “will not be given a free pass,” he said, “and that is irrespective of whether or not they have brought a child with them.”

The officials also addressed reports of nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minors that the Department of Health and Human Services could not locate last year.

Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families, told a Senate subcommittee in late April that HHS “was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475" unaccompanied minors.

Nearly a month later, concerns for the children have provoked outrage on social media under hashtags such as #WhereAreTheChildren and #MissingChildren.

Wagner said Tuesday that descriptions of the children as “lost” amount to “an inaccurate characterization of what happened.” He said the children had already been released to parents or guardians, but couldn’t be tracked down when officials made a voluntary call to check in 30 days after the placement.

Wagner said some children are placed with sponsors who themselves lack legal immigration status, which could make them reluctant to respond to a phone call from a federal official.

“There’s no reason to believe that anything has happened to the kids,” Wagner said. “If you call a friend and they don’t answer the phone, you don’t assume that they’ve been kidnapped.”

During the briefing, Miller argued that Democrats “have tried to starve the government of detention space, as part of their crusade for open borders.” But although many Democrats oppose expanding detention, funding for detention beds has risen significantly during the Trump administration.

Congress included funding for 40,520 detention beds in the omnibus spending bill passed in March, a 19 percent increase over the number of beds funded in fiscal year 2016. The Trump administration requested funding for 52,000 detention beds in its latest budget proposal.

“The Obama administration had a policy of ‘catch and release,’ which obviously made detention space for them less of a premium,” Miller said. “But as it stands right now, we are nearing capacity in all aspects of our detention and bed space, and it presents a real public safety crisis.”