President Joe Biden, while doing some good things for immigration, has reinstated a Trump-era policy that places children in detention centers at the Mexican border.
( Chris Boese / Unsplash )
Updated on Wednesday, March 10
Joe Biden has only been in office for like a little over a month and he’s already pissing people off. While saying that politicians are corrupt and disingenuous is almost as obvious as saying that the sky is blue, Biden’s stance on immigraion since taking office has angered people on both sides of the ailes. In one of the lowest points of Trump’s presidency, a “zero-tolerance” policy was enacted at the border which encouraged and forced the separation of kids from their parents. These kids were then placed in separate facilities (which were basically cages) in which they were forced to live in inhumane conditions.
While Joe Biden was campaigning for his presidency, he promised to undo these harms; his literal website claims that in the first 100 days he will “immediately reverse the Trump Administration’s cruel and senseless policies that separate parents from their children at our border.”
Yeah… that didn’t age well. The Biden administration decided to open their first child detention center at the border due to a “surge” in immigrarion at the border. Not only that, but, these camps were some of the original ones used by Trump during his administration's reign. As of Monday, March 8, a record high of 3,200 migrant children are being held at Border Patrol facilities. Almost half of these children are being held longer than the legal three-day limit.
To be fair, Biden’s done a lot during his short time in office. First, he formed a task force to relocate and “reunite” separated families from the zero-policy era. Secondly, Biden reversed a Trump policy which halted all green card applications due to the pandemic’s toll on jobs. He also managed to stop construction of “The Wall,” ended the infamously racist Travel ban and reinstate “protections” for DACA recipients.
But my issue is that, if Biden is undoing all of Trump’s disastrous immigration policies, why would he decide it’d be cute to reinstate one of Trump’s worst catastrophes of his administration.
While the administration claims that these camps are being run completely differently from the ones in-place during Trump, this is, quite simply, a bullshit way to doge a simple question: Why are kids being detained like prisoners?
If there was massive outrage from everyone when Trump did it, there should be outrage from everyone now that Biden is doing it. Politicians need to be held accountable for their actions, no matter the party. While the conditions may be, allegedly, “better,” almost like when you move from a rat infested studio apartment to a roach infested one, they are still detention centers under which no humans should be held captive. Especially not young children and teenagers.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), along with various other politicians from both sides, called out the Biden administration for their pure hypocrisy on the matter. People from all over the country have called out their hypocrisy. And now, we wait.
Biden said that these camps are only temporary and that they “...won't stay open very long…” However, I don’t particularly believe this but only time will tell what happens with the camps. All we can do now is continue to call Biden out for faulting on his campaign promises and protest these atrocious policies.
This article has been updated on Wednesday, March 10 to reflect the new findings that a record high of 3,200 migrant children are being held in Border Patrol facilities. Nearly half are being held for longer than the legal three-day limit.
Luigi Bencosme is an online writer at Rowdy Magazine. When he's not frantically swiping through Twitter or Instagram, he's indulging on an iced coffee while blasting all genres of music. You can reach out to him on Instagram @luigibenc or on email at luigibencosme18@gmail.com