Biden response to migrant crisis ‘inadequate’: Arizona Sen. Sinema

The Biden administration’s latest response to the migrant crisis is too little, too late in the face of Thursday’s end to a health law allowing the rapid expulsion of asylum seekers, Arizona Sen. Krysten Sinema warns.

“While it’s wonderful that the administration is announcing things like a 1,500 troop deployment and these new processing centers — which will not be operational by … Friday — those are good things,” Sinema told CBS’ Face the Nation in an interview that aired Sunday. 

“Those are aspirational. That’s not the same as operational. And so what I’m asking for and have been for two years, is for the administration to make concrete plans.”

During the talk at Arizona State University, moderator Margaret Brennan asked the former Democrat-turned-Independent if she’d spoken to the White House about preparations for a surge of migrants post-Title 42..

Though President Joe Biden is sending 1,500 troops to the southern border in light of an expected surge of border crossers, Sinema said the response “has not been adequate.”    

“The Biden administration had two years to prepare for this and did not do so. And our state is going to bear the brunt, and migrants will be in crisis as soon as next week,” she said.

“Just today, I was on the phone with a sheriff of Cochise County — he has gotten no information from the Department of Homeland Security of the federal government about what the flow is going to look like, about what they can expect for processing in terms of how long it takes to process migrants. He’s got no information,” she lamented.

“Either the administration has that information and they’re choosing not to share it, which is a problem since we’re the ones who are going to deal with the crisis, or they don’t have it and that’s even more concerning. Because how do you prepare for the inflow of migrants when you don’t know what you’re going to expect?”

Sinema has introduced legislation with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) to let the US border patrol expel migrants for the next two years — mimicking the Title 42 health emergency measure.

But even Sinema referred that plan as a “bandaid.”

“That bill is saying, hey, Title 42 goes away on Thursday, and everyone here in Arizona knows we are not prepared,” Sinema said.

The migrant swell is being felt already in New York City, where the influx of thousands who’ve crossed the US-Mexico border has so strained the shelter system that Mayor Eric Adams is sending some of them to hotels in suburban Rockland and Orange counties.

Sinema said elected officials from other parts of the country don’t grasp the crisis.

“Unfortunately, the parties are thinking about this from a political perspective, rather than a human perspective,” she charged.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday defended the administration’s response to a difficult regional problem.

“We are prepared. We have been prepared for this for quite some time,” he asserted.

“We have been preparing for this for more than a year and half. It is indeed a regional challenge and it requires a regional response, which is why we are working so closely with many countries to the south,” he told “Face the Nation.”

The Biden administration plans to open new processing centers for migrants in Latin America, starting with Columbia and Guatemala — but “it’s going to take our plan a while to really take hold,” Mayorkas admitted.

According to Mayorkas, the problem is smugglers are lying to migrants and encouraging them to cross the border, where they will be turned away or deported.

“We will be using our immigration authorities, which calls for a consequence regime. We have to correct the lie smugglers tell vulnerable migrants,” he said.

He said the 1,500 troops sent to the border region will not do enforcement work, but will assist border patrol agents.

Mayorkas also disputed criticism that federal officials are not informing politicians from border patrol states on what’s happening, saying regional Federal Emergency Management Agency officials at migrant information centers are doing so.

He said border patrol officials can only do so much “within a broken immigration system” — and urged Congress to pass legislation to better address the migrant crisis.