With controversy surrounding the current situation at the U.S. southern border in recent weeks, Rep. August Pfluger, whose district is near the border and contains several facilities designed to house those that are detained at the southern border, is taking aim at President Joe Biden for his insistence that the recent uptick in migrants is due to a natural, repeating, cyclical trend that occurs every year.
About the border crisis and recent increase in migrants detained at the border, President Biden said, "It happens every single solitary year."
Meanwhile, Pfluger claims that this is wrong and that the current crisis should be blamed on the president.
"This is blatantly wrong. More than 100,000 migrants were encountered at the border in February 2021—a 173% increase from February 2020. @POTUS caused this crisis and he refuses to even acknowledge it," Pfluger said.
The claim that President Biden is making is supported, he says, by the fact that the cooler winter months provide the right conditions for migrants to seek refuge from their normal home countries. While it is true that more migrants do typically come to the U.S. southern border than at this time of year, it is also true that this year's influx of migrants is larger than usual and is on pace to exhaust the facilities' resources that are typically used to house and care for the migrants.
This influx and the politics surrounding the topic have been a source of frustration for public officials in the area and those that operate the migrant facilities. One migrant facility was frustrated at the fact that they were not informed that youth would be arriving to the facility. Making the situation even more complicated is the fact that there have been several COVID-19 positive tests among migrants, specifically children, at the Midland migrant facility.
When asked about the possibility of ramping up the capacity and ability of these facilities to properly care for the migrants and facilitate operations at the southern border, President Biden said that the agencies are, "building back up the capacity that should have been maintained and built upon that Trump dismantled. It's going to take time."
Dealing with children at the border has been a sore subject for the administration, which has drawn sharp criticism of its handling of the situation.