The NPR Politics Podcast - Migrant Children Advocates Say Biden Should Have Been Prepared For Arrivals

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

The reasons the Biden administration is housing some migrant children in adult detention facilities are complicated. The number of migrants arriving at the border is rising and includes many children traveling without their parents. Trump reduced the capacity of the shelter system and Biden, unlike the former president, is not immediately deporting unaccompanied minors. Still, advocates on both sides of the aisle are calling for improved conditions.And DC statehood is having its day in the sun, but the Senate filibuster stands between the city and its dreams of congressional representation.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and WAMU reporter Mikaela Lefrak.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Ella calling from Edgewater, Maryland. This podcast was recorded at... It's 2.07 Eastern on Monday, March 22nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I would have finished my first day at school as a teacher in over a year. I'm so excited. Yay! Congrats! That is a big corner turner. Oh, yes. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Franco Ordonez. I also cover the White House.

And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And let's start with this. Over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was all across the political news shows with this clear message. They cannot come to the border. The border is closed. That was on CNN's State of the Union. But Franco, that message has not always been so clear from the Biden administration. Yeah, it hasn't always been clear. The Biden administration has really been kind of struggling with dual messages. Now they are saying with clarity that the border is not open. Don't come.

But for many of the first weeks of the administration, they have been really trying to balance this humanity approach, saying they want to have a more humane approach to the border, but at the same time, encourage those who are not seeking legitimate asylum cases not to come. And it's been a very, very difficult balance to strike. Just to contextualize this, here's the scale of what we're talking about. Immigration authorities encountered more than 100,000 migrants attempting to cross the border last month alone. There's more than 14,000 migrant teens and children now in U.S. custody and more are likely on the way. And these kids are posing a major challenge because there's just not enough appropriate housing to handle the number of children and teenagers, not to mention the broader number of migrants. But Franco, it seems like they weren't prepared for this surge,

even though they must have known that when you send a welcoming message, even though you also say don't come now, that desperate people in Central America are going to hear the welcoming part. So why weren't they prepared for this? Yeah, I mean, I think that is a major question that they are trying to answer right now. I spoke with people in the transition who told me that they were ready. They were expecting these numbers to come. on the door at the White House from Trump to Biden is going to kind of, you know, be a signal that you're going to have a more human approach to migration. So the administration will even

acknowledge that there was a lot of pent-up demand, but the administration was, you know, did also have other information that they could have, you know, made adjustments for. I think one challenge that's kind of been articulated to me is that the Biden administration underestimated the reduced size of the HHS shelter system. That's the Health and Human Services shelter system that takes these children. The Trump administration dramatically reduced the size of the shelter system, and a lot of the advocates feel that this may have caused bigger problems, essentially kind of scared away relatives and parents. That was another thing that the Biden administration has since tried to do,

which is end some of the information sharing between enforcement agents and these shelter workers so that family members will come forward and be more willing to, you know, take custody of the children because they're not afraid of being deported or being removed. But it is it is a huge challenge. So, Franco, I want to circle back to a lot of the different choices the Biden administration has made or not made here, the way that the message has changed and made the situation worse. But, Mara, it's fair to say that in addition to being an enormous humanitarian has frustrated Biden's allies on the left, including immigration advocates and several Democratic lawmakers. Well, sure. Biden now owns this problem. And immigration is a highly politicized, weaponized political issue. And it's something that Republicans have used to their advantage in the past. It was one of the core messages of Donald Trump, stopping immigrants from coming over the border. He wanted to build that big wall.

And now they're saying, look, Joe Biden is doing the same thing as Donald Trump. He's putting kids in cages. It's a little bit different because Donald Trump's policy was to separate kids from their parents when they came over. For punitive reasons. For punitive reasons. For punitive reasons. There's no doubt that Republicans think this is a good issue for them. In the past, it's energized their base and helped them win some Republican-leading independence, but it doesn't always work. In 2018, Trump warned about the caravan of immigrants over and over again, still didn't help him hang on to both houses of Congress. And it's unclear if this

problem, which is happening so early in the Biden administration, if Biden can get control of it and solve the problem, it's unclear whether it's going to hurt him when it comes to the midterms. So Franco, that's what I want to talk about with you next, because we've talked about how the Biden administration changed some policies that led more people to try to cross the border. We've talked about the messaging being mixed at times. And also, you know, the Biden administration has talked a lot about how there's messaging out of their control of people saying you should come when that is not in fact the case. But what's been interesting to me is how flat footed in a way the administration has been about trying to address that problem that seems to be changing.

We're seeing more and more reports of administration officials going to the border, going to the Central American countries. What are they doing next? How are they trying to deal with this? Yeah, one of the things that they are doing next is two of their top officials are actually heading to Mexico and Guatemala this week. They're heading to Mexico today. Ambassador Roberta Jacobson, who's kind of leading the effort on the border at the National Security Council, as well as Juan Gonzalez. He's the senior director for the National Security Council. They are basically kind of the president's advisors on this issue at the White House. And what they're going to do is they're going to go and talk with leaders in those countries to see what kind of things they can do together

to try to stem the flow of migration. And it's a mix of short-term efforts to kind of address that flow, but also kind of medium and long-term efforts to attack the root causes of migration. Like, how can they fight poverty? How can they fight corruption and issues like that? Because the reality is, is kind of like as Mara was saying, is like these things have happened before. They happened under President Obama. They happened under President Trump. These are cyclical issues that keep coming up that that there is just not

the infrastructure to address them. All right. I'm sure we will be talking about this very soon. Franco, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much, guys. Mara, stick around. And when we get back, we're going to talk about some new traction in the fight to make Washington, D.C. a state. On NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, we talk about what we're watching, listening to, or just trying to figure out, like what concert films you should watch if you miss live music, and great books to read alone or in your book club. All of that in around 20 minutes every weekday. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. We are back. We're talking D.C. statehood and we're joined by Michaela LaFrac. Hey, Michaela. Hey, Scott. So you have

covered the quest for D.C. statehood for a long time at WAMU. You even hosted a whole podcast on D.C. statehood called The 51st. I should also mention you are a star middle infielder for the NPR WAMU softball team. It's good to have you on the podcast. Thanks for having me. So we're going to come back to your reporting in a second. But Mara, let's just start with this big picture situation. There are so many issues that fit this description. But D.C. statehood really jumps out to me as an extreme example of one of those things that has very quickly moved from something that activists talk about. It's kind of a fringe issue to something that is front and center in the Democratic Party with basically

every single Democrat from President Biden on down saying, not only do I think this should happen, I think it's a priority. How did that happen? Because the needs of the Democrats for more seats in the Senate is getting more and more crucial. D.C. statehood has always been part of the Democratic wish list, but it's a civil rights issue. There's a lot of, it's a bigger congressional district than Vermont or Wyoming, 700,000 odd people live in it. But beyond that, you know, they've always wanted D.C. statehood because it would mean probably two more Democratic votes in the Senate. And they are now chafing under this 50-50 Senate where it's really hard to pass anything because of the filibuster, which,

by the way, would have to be broken in order to get D.C. made a state. We can talk about that later. But it's just becoming more urgent politically. And Michaela, I loved your podcast on this. You've been covering this for a while. Bring us up to speed. Even though this is the first time a president has been weighing in on it and it's been more of a pressing central issue, this has been a very long fight. Right. That's true. I mean, people in D.C. have been fighting for more representation basically since the founding fathers created the district. In terms of D.C.'s autonomy, it's a relatively new movement.

D.C. residents only got the right to vote for president after the ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961. Then in the following decade, they gained home rule. So basically the right to elect their own mayor, create their own budget. But in the last five years, that's really when the statehood movement has completely taken off. There was a referendum held in 2016 when 86 percent of D.C. residents voted in favor of statehood, and it's just been snowballing ever since. So, Mara, this passed the House last session for the first time. There's a hearing today. It's most likely going to pass the House again. But then it goes to the Senate. And then this is the same conversation we've been having on so many different bills lately. Even though Democrats control the chamber, it likely would go nowhere. In the past, states have been admitted, new states have been admitted in tandem, generally like a state that leans Democratic and a state that leans Republican. You know, in the old days, people talked about D.C. being paired with Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico was considered to be kind of a safe vote for Republicans. That's not true anymore. So you'd have to have 10 Republican votes to pass it. Not only do you not have 10 Republican votes, but Republicans see keeping D.C. out of the Senate as an existential question. There was a hearing today, and I can just tell you in the House, and here's a quote from Representative James Comer of Kentucky who said, quote, D.C. statehood is a key part of the radical

leftist agenda to reshape America, along with the Green New Deal, defunding the police and packing the U.S. Supreme Court. So this is something that they see as a kind of political life or death issue for them. They don't want to have it. And if Democrats think they should break the filibuster to make D.C. a state, well, then they have to convince all 50 of their Democrats, and they don't even have 50 votes of their own to break a filibuster for the purposes of letting D.C. become a state. Yeah. And Michaela, Mara mentioned that that hearing in the House today you were watching, you know, as somebody who's been covering this for a while. Did you hear any new or interesting arguments for or against statehood? Well, for the most part, they were rehashing the traditional arguments against it, you know, saying that that Democrats just want two new Senate seats, that it's a power grab, that this hadn't heard before. Congressman Jody Heiss, a Republican from Georgia, said D.C. would be the only state without an airport and without a car dealership.

D.C. does not car dealerships, as we know here. He also said that if D.C. became a state, it would lead to more taxes for for all Americans. He cited the fact that D.C. could levy a bridge toll. So if you were a spring breaker or a family coming into D.C. and wanted to cross from Virginia into the district, you could have to pay a toll. So that, I guess, is another concern. Those are not very high-minded arguments. It's very hard for Republicans to say it's unfair for D.C. to be a state. But so they're coming up with all these other arguments. But, you know, like I said, admitting new states to the union is always about power politics. All right. Michaela LaFrac, a longtime reporter at WAMU and soon to be the host of Vermont Edition at Vermont Public Radio. Thanks for joining us.

Congratulations. Thanks, everyone. All right. Thanks, Michaela. And a quick reminder, we have that listener survey. We'd love to hear from you. It's NPR.org slash politics survey. Take a few minutes to fill it out. We really appreciate it.

I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.