President Biden to migrants: 'don't come over'

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News, President Joe Biden told migrants to stop coming to the border, as a flood of migrants and unaccompanied children attempt to make their way into the US, prompting a crisis at the southern border.

"Do you have to say quite clearly, 'Don’t come?'" Stephanopoulos asked President Biden.

"Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don’t come over," said Biden. "Don’t leave your town or city or community."

These are new statements coming from the President as just this past week, the Biden Administration refused to acknowledge the crisis at the southern border. Instead, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the crisis a 'challenge.'

According to statements from the Biden administration’s head of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, the United States is "on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”

The statements made by Mayorkas are a stark contrast from previous claims made by the department head, where he slammed former President Trump’s immigration policies and emphasized that there is “no crisis at the southern border.” He said that border control is working feverishly to make sure that there will be no crisis at the border.

There are an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 daily crossings at the southern border. In the interview, President Biden claimed that crossings at the southern border surged in 2019 and 2020.

"First of all, there was a surge in the last two years," said Biden to Stephanopoulos. "In '19 and '20, there was a surge, as well."

A study put forth by Pew Research indicates that migrant apprehension in February 2021 tremendously exceeded the average, noting the US experienced a similar surge in 2019.

The Pew Research Center expressed that former President Trump put policies in place to stop the surge of migrants, such as his ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, which President Biden recently signed an Executive Order to rescind Trump’s policies at the southern border.

Internal documents from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) show that the number of migrant children illegally crossing the southern border has exceeded federal ability to hold them, Axios reported.

Federal facilities at the southern border are currently at 94 percent capacity. Border Patrol sent 321 migrant children to HHS custody daily. Average child migrant crossings reached 203 per day in late January, according to the documents.