US President Joe Biden pushed back Thursday against attacks on his handling of a surge of immigrants, calling it a seasonal increase and saying his approach was more humanitarian than predecessor Donald Trump's.
Accused by opposition Republicans of fomenting a new crisis of undocumented migrants, Biden said his administration is sending all but unaccompanied children and some families back into Mexico.
"There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. It happens every year," Biden said in his first press conference since taking office.
"The reason they are coming is that it is the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way, because of the heat in the desert," he said.
Biden said he had designated Vice President Kamala Harris to work with countries like Guatemala and Honduras on the root causes that drive migrants to head northward toward the United States.
"It's because of earthquakes, floods, it's because of the lack of food, it's because of gang violence" he said.
Political challenge
The immigration surge has become a key political challenge to Biden just weeks into his administration.
In February more than 100,000 migrants were interdicted at the border.
Of those, nearly all single adults were sent back into Mexico.
But an unknown number of families with small children, and more than 9,000 unaccompanied children, were permitted to stay.
New data from the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) suggest an acceleration in the first three weeks of March, with unaccompanied children appearing likely to top 14,000.
The jump has swamped CBP and Department of Housing and Human Services facilities meant to house and process the children, eventually to connect them with US relatives.
Some 16,500 children were in CBP and HHS custody this week.
Biden said there "is no easy answer" the migration challenge.
But he said he could not let the children "starve to death and stay on the other side" of the border.
"No previous administration did that either, except Trump. I'm not going to do it," said Biden.
Biden said the jammed facilities for the children were "unacceptable" and that he was ordering an expansion, including opening a Texas military base near the border, Ft. Bliss, to house them.
He added that thousands of migrants who crossed into the United States as families with small children were being allowed to stay because Mexico is "refusing to take them back."
Axios reported that only 13 percent of some 13,000 who came as families in the third week of March were sent back.
But Biden said his government is negotiating to get Mexico to accept them.
"They should all be going back."
'Human tsunami'
Republicans blasted back at Biden. Stephen Miller, the head of immigration policy in the Trump White House, said Biden's decision to accept all uncompanied minors "single-handedly created this crisis.
"The youth migrant crisis will only end when Biden does a full 180 & switches from a resettlement policy to a repatriation policy," said Miller.
"The Trump policies created dramatic decreases in illegal immigration. The changes made by President Biden have created a virtual human tsunami," said senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
