Roberta Jacobson, the White House coordinator for the Southern Border, acknowledged on Wednesday that it is not a “coincidence” attempted border crossings spiked after President Joe Biden took office.
The admission: Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Jacobson, “Do you think it’s a coincidence that as soon as Trump and his immigration policy were on the way out and Biden and his stated policy were on the way in this historic surge on the border started?”
“Surges tend to respond to hope, and there was significant hope for a more humane policy after four years of pent-up demand,” Jacobson replied.
- “So I don’t know if I would call that a coincidence. But the idea that a more humane policy would be in place may have driven people to make that decision. But perhaps, more importantly, it definitely drove smugglers to express disinformation, spread disinformation about what was now possible.”
Jacobson, who was the ambassador to Mexico from 2016 to 2018, said now is not the time for migrants to come to the United States, adding in Spanish, “The border is not open.”
- It’s a message the Biden administration has repeatedly sent despite the president’s pro-immigration campaign rhetoric and rollback of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
Photographic evidence: Later in the briefing, Doocy grilled White House press secretary Jen Psaki on whether the administation has a “messaging problem” given that migrants are nonetheless flooding the border — in some cases wearing T-shirts asking Biden to grant them entry.
Then, on Thursday, the Washington Post reported on internal data showing that the crisis at the border is significantly worse than Biden administration has acknowledged.
- According to the report, a record number of unaccompanied migrant children are being detained “far longer than legally allowed” as “federal health officials fell further behind in their race to find space for them in shelters.”
