Biden promised a ‘fair and humane’ immigration overhaul. What he inherited is a mess. - POLITICO

One month in, Biden is facing the reality that building the “fair and humane” immigration system he promised on the campaign trail is a huge undertaking.

As a result, the administration is relying on controversial practices of past presidents — housing unaccompanied minors in temporary detention facilities, applying a Trump-era pandemic rule to rapidly expel migrants at the border without due process — even as officials quietly try to draw up new policies to handle migrants at the Southern border that are a break from the past.

Biden officials have provided scant details, however, on how, exactly, they plan to tackle the problems on the border that bedeviled their predecessors.

officials and immigration experts recognize that Biden could be holding back details of his future plans to avoid triggering large numbers of migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Biden administration has not publicly discussed a future alternative to handle the influx of unaccompanied children at the border.

The Biden administration on Monday reopened a detention facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, amid a growing number of migrant teenagers crossing the border unaccompanied by a parent — news that quickly sparked outrage with critics quickly tying it back to the Trump-era “kids in cages.” The facility, used by the Trump administration in 2019, was the source of much protest and criticism from Democrats, advocates and immigration attorneys.

But the facility is not reopening under the same conditions or for the same reasons as it was used under the Trump administration, Biden officials said.

The facility is not the same as those run by Customs and Border Protection.

Federal law dictates that unaccompanied children arriving at the border, must be transported out of CBP facilities within 72 hours (although it often surpasses that timeframe).

Still, this week, the Biden administration caught flak from progressives for taking unaccompanied migrant children to detention facilities.

government focused its efforts on stopping immigration and keeping migrants out, not addressing conditions of migrant detention.

The Biden administration has not publicly discussed a future alternative to handle the influx of unaccompanied children at the border.

The crisis Biden is facing at the border today isn’t the result of a mass influx of migrants, but rather the fact that there is simply no infrastructure in place to handle migrant arrivals in an orderly way.

Despite Republican contentions that the border is open, the vast majority of migrants are still being turned away under Biden.

The Biden administration has not said when it will stop using Title 42, likely because it knows that would trigger more migration at a time where no new large-scale policy is in place.

Right now, a limited number of migrants who have successfully crossed the border illegally are allowed to remain in the United States

The Biden administration also recently began to slowly let in migrants that were, due to a Trump-era policy, forced to remain in Mexico while their U.S

But some are worried that Title 42 is the only thing keeping unmanageable numbers of migrants from arriving at the border