Steep rise in unaccompanied minors at US-Mexico border poses challenge to Biden’s immigration policy

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A recent sharp rise in the number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the US border with Mexico has presented a challenge to President Joe Biden’s plans to relax immigration rules, USA Today reported Saturday.

According to the US Office of Refugee Resettlement (USORR), which takes care of immigrants once they cross into America, the number of unaccompanied minors at the Mexico border rose from 1,530 in October to 3,364 in December last year. This was an increase of 120%. The figures for January were not yet available, USA Today said.

The USORR normally allocates 13,764 beds for immigrant minors, but due to COVID-19 social distancing requirements, only 7,971 are open at the moment, USA Today reports. Of the available beds, 5,200 are occupied, leaving 2,700 open beds.

In a statement about the current spike in minors arriving at the US-Mexico border, Lisa Koop, associate director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said: “It’s really critical that the Biden administration live up to their commitment of fair and humane treatment of immigrants at the border. We’re more than capable of surging resources to the border to humanely and fairly process these children without sending them to influx facilities or allow them to languish in (border patrol) facilities.”

As the pandemic spread around the world in 2020, the number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border fell to around 700 a month last summer, USA Today reports. However, those figures have been steadily increasing.

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