FILE-(Photo by Oliver Contreras/SIPA USA)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Department of Homeland Security is pushing back against Republican criticism of the Biden administration’s border policies. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is refusing to call the surge of migrant children entering the United States a “crisis.”
Republican members of Congress argue that President Joe Biden has wrongly rolled back immigration policies enacted by Donald Trump. But in congressional testimony Wednesday, Mayorkas pointed to the Trump administration’s onetime policy of separating immigrant families under a “zero tolerance” policy on border crossings.
Mayorkas says, “A crisis is when a nation is willing to rip a 9-year-old child out of the hands of his or her parent and separate that family to deter future migration.”
