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Nina Lakhani studies for us as we speak from Texas, asking is there a crisis at the border?

After 4 years of racist, chaotic, anti-immigration insurance policies by the Trump administration – in addition to rising desperation fuelled by the pandemic and excessive local weather occasions – the variety of folks looking for to enter the US is rising.

But advocates within the Rio Grande Valley, the place undocumented migrants have lengthy been relied upon for reasonable farm labour, reject incendiary claims that the numbers are overwhelming.

“Migration goes up and down, that’s the reality of the border. Biden has different values and has given people hope, but there’s no border crisis, to say so is political manipulation,” stated Ramona Casas, director of the migrant advocacy group Arise. “We need to address the root causes and transform the broken immigration system, not more militarization.”

The present uptick began earlier than Biden’s election, in accordance to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures.

Jenn Budd, a former senior border patrol agent turned whistleblower, stated: “The only crisis at the border is the children, which the administration is trying to deal with, anything else is simply not true and an attempt to play politics, make Biden look bad and ensure the money keeps flowing to the border security industry.”

In 2000, a complete of 9,212 border patrol agents detained a mean of just about 137,000 undocumented migrants per 30 days on the southern border. In the 2021 fiscal yr till February, the common was simply over 76,000 per month, however the variety of brokers is greater than double in contrast to 2000.

Earlier this month, the Texas governor Greg Abbott deployed state troopers and the nationwide guard to the border after claiming, with out proof, that unlawful immigrants had been spreading the coronavirus. Abbott’s unsubstantiated Covid claims got here shortly after he introduced plans to finish the state masks mandate and ordered companies to reopen at 100% capability.

But unlawful or undocumented migrants will not be being launched into the US. The two teams being allowed in are some present asylum seekers, thanks to the repeal of Trump’s Remain in Mexico coverage, and some new arrivals presenting at authorized ports of entry, together with unaccompanied youngsters and younger households, who’ve been permitted to stay within the nation pending asylum courtroom hearings. In Texas, everybody else continues to be turned again, say advocates.

Read extra of Nina Lakhani’s report right here: Is there a crisis at the border?: a look at both sides of the immigration argument