When Joe Biden assumed the presidency earlier this 12 months, he inherited an immigration coverage from Donald Trump that was punitive and infrequently criticised as excessively merciless. The forty fifth US president had unsuccessfully tried to construct a wall throughout the complete southern border and vilified migrants as “invaders”.
The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani tells Anushka Asthana that what she witnessed on the border in Texas was a gentle inflow of determined individuals fleeing poverty, drought and violence. Many had been households escaping collectively to what they hoped can be a brand new begin.
However regardless of the brand new rhetoric from the White Home and a rest of a few of the harshest measures, migrants are nonetheless being detained and lots of despatched straight again throughout the border.
Washington bureau chief David Smith describes the stress Biden is below to reply to the problem. Democrats have referred to as the scenario a problem and drawback. Republicans have rushed to explain it as the primary disaster and catastrophe of the brand new president’s time period.
Officers say the variety of individuals caught making an attempt to cross the US-Mexico border is on tempo to hit its highest level for 20 years.
{Photograph}: Joe Raedle/Getty Photos
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