Gimenez, Salazar visit U.S.-Mexico border, criticize Biden’s immigration policy

Miami’s two first-year members of Congress visited the U.S.-Mexico border near El Paso on Monday as part of a Republican effort to criticize President Joe Biden’s immigration policy amid a rush of migrants that has overwhelmed existing federal resources.

Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez joined House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California for a tour with United States Border Patrol and a view of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. In recent weeks, Republicans in Washington have repeatedly called the uptick in illegal border crossing a “crisis” and said the Biden administration doesn’t have a concrete plan to deal with the issue.

Gimenez and Salazar joined a group of Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee for the visit, though Salazar isn’t a member of the committee. Gimenez and Salazar also made remarks in Spanish that were directed at Hispanic Americans, with a particular focus on the treacherous journey of most migrants from Central America to the United States.

“We cannot allow what’s happening at the border, our girls in Honduras and Nicaragua are the ones being raped,” Salazar said. “Child sex trafficking is one of the highest crimes in this country. I ask my community, Hispanic Americans, to send a message to your representatives that we cannot have this at the border.”

Gimenez said he recently spoke to a family that traveled 22 days from Honduras to the border, noting that the family decided to come after Biden took office on Jan. 20. He said the Biden administration was refusing to adequately address the surge in migrants, which reached more than 100,000 people during the month of February, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“Many of them don’t make it,” Gimenez said, referring to families and children who attempt to cross the border. “For Maria and I, and Hispanics across the nation, we’re putting our own people’s lives at risk because of this policy. I’ve asked the president to reverse this policy and restore agreements we had with Central America and Mexico.”

The 100,441 people caught at the border last month doesn’t include those who successfully crossed the border in February without ending up in federal custody and is well above the 76,545 who were apprehended during the same month two years ago. The 2019 surge led to the reopening of the Homestead Detention Center, the largest center for migrant children in the country. Homestead, which was later mothballed in November 2019 with migrant children sent to sponsors or other detention centers, has never formally shuttered despite housing no children and employing no staff.

Homestead’s potential reopening under Biden underscores the tough choices the border surge presents for the president. Left-leaning activists in Florida have urged Biden not to reopen the detention center, but existing federal resources to house migrant children are full.

Gimenez said he thinks the Homestead Detention Center will reopen given the number of migrant children crossing the border. He supports reopening the center because it can begin operating quickly.

“As much as [the Biden administration] tries to tamp it down there is a crisis at the border,” Gimenez said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “A large number of these unaccompanied minors happen to be young girls and they end up in the wrong hands. If they actually get placed in the center in Homestead, they’re in good hands.”

On Monday, the Biden administration announced that the Dallas convention center would be used to hold up to 3,000 immigrant teenagers for up to 90 days. At its peak, Homestead supervised 1,200 kids, making it the nation’s largest center for unaccompanied migrant children.

Gimenez and Salazar’s involvement in a high-profile trip with McCarthy is part of a larger GOP effort to highlight the party’s inroads with Hispanic Americans during the 2020 election. Both lawmakers defeated incumbent Democrats in 2020, and Republicans performed well in Hispanic-heavy border communities in Texas, areas that traditionally support Democrats overwhelmingly.

Border security and enforcement is tricky territory for Biden and Democrats in Congress, who are under pressure from their own supporters not to repeat former President Barack Obama’s approach of deporting immigrant families and former President Donald Trump’s approach of separating migrant children from their parents.

Last week, Biden’s coordinator for the southern border said the Biden administration wants $4 billion from Congress to address the causes of migration and reinstate a program to reunite migrant children with parents who are legally in the United States. But the number of people trying to cross the border is rising by the day.

“Surges tend to respond to hope, and there was a significant hope for a more humane policy after four years of, you know, pent-up demand,” Southern Border Coordinator Roberta Jacobson said last week. “So I don’t know whether I would call that a coincidence, but I certainly think that the idea that a more humane policy would be in place may have driven people to make that decision.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help manage and care for children crossing the border on Saturday.

In response, congressional Republicans said Biden should have kept Trump’s policies in place.

“Right now we have a border that is not secure,” McCarthy said, accusing Democrats of ignoring border security to pursue pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. “They would rather have [immigration] for a political ploy. We can solve the immigration problem, but don’t confuse a border crisis with an immigration problem.”

This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 4:50 PM.