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Migrants walk near a gate along the U.S. border with Mexico after being spotted by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent and taken into custody while trying to cross on March 21 in Abram-Perezville, Texas. Julio Cortez/AP hide caption

Migrants walk near a gate along the U.S. border with Mexico after being spotted by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent and taken into custody while trying to cross on March 21 in Abram-Perezville, Texas.

The number of migrants crossing into the United States in March was higher than in any other month in at least 15 years.

That's according to preliminary data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection that was reviewed by The Washington Post. The figures show U.S. agents apprehended more than 171,000 migrants in March, including more than 18,800 unaccompanied minors. In all, the number of arrests and detentions has more than doubled since January, according to the Post.

The skyrocketing numbers have posed an early test for the Biden administration, which has refused to refer to what's happening on the border as a crisis.

"The truth of the matter is nothing has changed," President Biden said during his first press conference in office late last month. "It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. That happens every year."

Cecilia Muoz, who worked on the Biden transition team and previously served as director of former President Barack Obama's Domestic Policy Council, says there is indeed a crisis that needs solving, but it's a crisis that extends far beyond the border.

"This is a refugee crisis in our hemisphere, and you're never going to be able to fix a refugee crisis with the measures that we take at the border," Muoz says.

Muoz, currently an adviser with the think tank New America, spoke with NPR's Morning Edition about the migrant surge, saying that until the U.S. addresses the crises in Central America that are causing people to flee their homes in the first place, the challenges on the border won't go away. "You can't fix it at the border," she says.

Below are excerpts from the conversation, edited in parts for clarity and length.

On what has led to the current conditions on the border

In 2014, the Obama administration faced a similar problem. It took a couple of months, but ultimately for the rest of the Obama administration it was managed with the right facilities and the right procedures. We never ran out of shelter space again and the process flowed pretty smoothly. I think that's where the Biden administration is ultimately heading. But they signaled early on that it was going to be messy at first because they inherited a mess, and that it was going to take time until we're able to manage the flow and to properly house people.

But ultimately, this is a refugee crisis in our hemisphere, and you're never going to be able to fix a refugee crisis with the measures that we take at the border. So it is tremendously important that the president has asked Vice President Harris to lead the conversation with the Northern Triangle countries [of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala], where people are coming from, that they have plans to reinstate the kinds of investments that started getting made in the Obama years, and very importantly to help people in the region get to safety without having to cross all of Mexico with smugglers. We lost four years of progress and momentum, but the sooner we get started and the Biden administration is getting started the sooner we will be able to manage this problem and its roots, which is really how you fix it. You can't fix it at the border.

The Biden administration has announced it wants to spend roughly $4 billion to address root causes failing economies, violence in Central and South American countries. The Obama administration spent $750 million, sent that money to those countries in 2016 alone, and it just didn't work. Is this throwing more money at a problem that can't be solved that way?

Look, this is not a problem which is going to go away over the long term unless we actually get very serious about addressing the reasons that people migrate in the first place. We did see some progress in Honduras, for example, as a result of the investments that the Obama administration made.

But ultimately, you can't secure long-term progress in the course of a year or two years. At the end of the day, this is our hemisphere. We live in it and we are reaping the effects of disinvestment over a long period of time. We are seeing the effects of failing to fix our own immigration laws over a long period of time. They haven't been updated since the '90s, and had we done that we wouldn't be seeing nearly the scale of problem that we're seeing now.

But what are the realistic benchmarks for these countries and these governments when it comes to getting this foreign aid? What effects does the money need to have in order to say this is money worth spending?

So, for example, in Guatemala, which is experiencing a drought which had a disastrous failure of the coffee crop, the United States had been engaged in work in Guatemala to change the kinds of crops that people are raising to ultimately make their lives more sustainable in response, frankly, to the ways in which climate change is changing agriculture in the country.

In Honduras, Honduras has just suffered two huge hurricanes that happened in exactly the same place within two weeks of each other. So, immediate disaster assistance is a short-term way to make sure that people can survive at home and not have to resort to making a very dangerous trip in order to survive. People don't choose to take a trip this dangerous or to send their children with smugglers because it's easy. They do it because they're desperate. So we can measure the impact of creating the wherewithal so that people can stay at home, which is ultimately what they prefer.

This story was produced and edited for broadcast by Marc Rivers, Elena Moore and Simone Popperl. Jason Breslow produced for the Web.

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Former Obama Official On The Surge At The Border: 'This Is A Refugee Crisis' - NPR

MADRID - Like thousands before him, Oufame Mdiay left Senegal in search of work and a better future.

Taking his life in his hands, he spent a week in a cramped boat with nearly 130 others who recently made the Atlantic journey from Senegal to Spains Canary Islands, 100 kilometers off the coast of Morocco.

I want to find work here as there is nothing for me back in Senegal. I came with my four brothers, he told VOA from his temporary new home on the island of Gran Canaria.

The 19-year-old is learning Spanish while he waits to find out if his claim for asylum will be successful or he will be deported back to Senegal.

Cleared of Reports of Turning Back Migrants, Frontex, the European Unions Border Agency, Faces More Scrutiny

Frontex is an increasingly powerful agency that monitors the 27-nation bloc's external borders

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Snchez will make the reverse journey, traveling from Madrid to Senegal and Angola starting Wednesday - in an official jet rather than a flimsy boat - to launch a new diplomatic initiative to make Africa a priority for Spain.

Spain's leftist government wants to combat illegal immigration by boosting Madrid's economic links with a raft of African nations by 2023.

During his visit to Senegal, Snchez will praise the work of Spanish police who are posted in the West African to fight people smugglers.

The goal of the strategy is to curb illegal immigration that brings thousands of unskilled African laborers who, some politicians complain, contribute little to the Spanish economy.

The strategy, called Africa Focus 2023, also includes a plan by the government to encourage financial programs to support Spanish companies seeking to expand in Africa and to call for debt relief for African nations at G20 meetings.

The program also includes a raft of educational initiatives including one called Eramus+ that will attempt to encourage Africans to come to Spain to train for jobs which could be useful for the Spanish economy in the future.

This would reverse the trend of sub-Saharan migrants who end up picking crops or peddling fake designer handbags on Spanish beaches.

In the past year, Spain has become the focus of the European migration crisis after more than 25,000 people arrived in the Canary Islands since January 2020 from Western Africa.

Authorities were left struggling to cope with the deluge of arrivals and thousands were left living in tents in a makeshift dockside camp.

In Spain's Complex Migration Game, Africans See a Disadvantage

Arriving at the Promised Land, immigrantsfrom Africa claim Spain favors arrivals from Latin America,butthe rules and numbers suggestthe truth is more complex

Emergency camps were set up but the trail of migrants trying to escape the economic crisis in Africa caused by the pandemic shows no signs of let up.

Escalating efforts

Apart from economic aid to African states, a Spanish warship will be deployed off the coast of West Africa to combat the pirates and smugglers.

At a time when Spains unemployment rate and the number of failing businesses are surging as a result of the pandemic, the measures are a sign of a growing urgency for Madrid to halt illegal immigration.

We think that the most effective way to obtain this result is through prevention at origin and transit countries, a Spanish Foreign Ministry source told VOA.

Prevention means assisting our migratory partners in coping with the challenges on drivers of involuntary migration from their countries so the link between migration and development will be for some time still strong, the source said.

Spain will also boost support, both politically and financially, to law enforcement agencies in training in African states that are on the front line against the fight against people smugglers.

Analysts believe Spain's diplomatic initiative needs to reverse years of neglect of the region by Europe while China has forged strong links with many African states.

Europe has got to get a more efficient relationship with Africa in terms of instilling more democracy, better practices for immigration and economic investment. They have got to reverse this division which has existed until now, Carmen Gonzlez, an expert in international migration at the Real Elcano Institute, a Madrid research organization, said.

She said opening up an Erasmus scheme for African students would start to give them a chance to train for qualified jobs.

Gonzlez said Spain, like other southern European countries such as Greece and Italy that have received large numbers of migrants in recent years, have failed to obtain the support they need from the EU to cope with the burden.

The EU has to take into account more the African perspective or the problem will carry on. There must be more solidarity among EU states.

In COVID-19 Migration Surge, Africans Take a More Dangerous Route

Traffickers send African migrants to Canary Islands as authorities clamp down on Mediterranean route to Spains mainland

NGOs welcomed the Spanish governments initiative but called for more humanitarian visas for migrants to gain access to Europe instead of closing frontiers in return for economic aid.

One of the ways for legal and secure access to Spain that they could start is the concession of more humanitarian visas for people who feel that they have been forced to leave their countries because they have no other option, especially from African countries, Nuria Ferre, of the Spanish Commission for Refugees, told VOA.

We think this would be the best way to reduce illegal immigration and not asking transit countries to close their frontiers in return for more aid for development, Ferre said.

More here:
Spain Looks to Africa for Ways to Curb Migrant Influx - Voice of America

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) gave a compelling argument on immigration policy on Tuesday, dismissing the term border crisis and instead calling it an imperialism crisis and a climate crisis.

While answering questions from her Instagram followers Tuesday night, Ocasio-Cortez responded to someone who asked, Why are you not addressing the border crisis and the kids in cages like you used to?

Are you for real? Ocasio-Cortez responded. So often people wanna say, Why arent you talking about the border crisis? Or why arent you talking about it in this way? Well, were talking about it; they just dont like how were talking about it.

Ocasio-Cortez continued, saying its not a border crisis but rather, Its an imperialism crisis, its a climate crisis, its a trade crisis. The current immigration system is based on the U.S. carceral system, she said, and the solution should be rooted in foreign policy.

Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that there had been an influx of people at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, overwhelming the facilities set up to house them. Psaki said factors including the pandemic creating undue hardships, natural disasters, and flight from violence or persecution has contributed to the rise in people.

Ocasio-Cortez attributed the United States outsized role in the climate crisis to the increase of natural disasters in regions including the global south, which has ultimately forced people in those regions to leave their homes.

The U.S. has disproportionately contributed to the total amount of emissions that is causing a planetary climate crisis right now, Ocasio-Cortez continued on Instagram. But who is bearing the brunt of that? Its actually not us.

She continued: Its South Asia, its Latin America that are gonna be experiencing the floods, wildfires and droughts in a disproportionate way, which ding ding ding, has already started a migration crisis.

Ocasio-Cortez also denounced calling the increased number of people crossing the border a surge, because of the terms militaristic and white supremacist connotations.

This is not a surge. These are children, Ocasio-Cortez said. And they are not insurgents. And we are not being invaded which by the way is a white supremacist idea, philosophy. The idea that if an other is coming in the population, that this is like an invasion of who we are.

Last week, President Joe Biden addressed immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border during his first official press conference, including children being detained for long periods of time instead of being transferred to shelters. Biden said the increase in people migrating to the U.S. in the winter months occurs every year. (While the total number of people crossing the border is relatively similar to prior years during the same period, the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border between January and February 2021 is significantly up, government data shows.)

The reason theyre coming is that its the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert, number one, Biden said.

He proposed putting together a bipartisan plan of over $700 million to deal with the root causes of why people are leaving their countries. Biden also said former President Trump eliminated funding for government agencies like Health and Human Services to provide proper care for migrant families, which has led to the influx of children being detained. (NBC reported that this claim is partially true.)

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AOC Expertly Breaks Down Why Words About Immigration Matter - NowThis

Turkish deputy interior minister Ismail Catakli rejects claims, accusing Greece of pushing back 231 migrants in seven incidents.

Greece has accused Turkey of trying to provoke it by attempting to push boats carrying migrants into Greek waters, a claim Ankara strongly rejected.

Greece and Turkey disagree on a range of issues, including energy resources in the Mediterranean Sea, and tensions between the NATO allies rose last year when thousands of asylum seekers in Turkey tried to storm the Greek land border.

Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said the Greek coastguard reported multiple incidents on Friday of the Turkish coastguard and navy accompanying migrant boats to the border of Europe, in an effort to provoke an escalation with Greece.

It is beyond doubt that these migrants departed Turkish shores, and given the fact they were supported by Turkey, were not at risk, Mitarachi said in a statement.We call on Turkey to stand down and stop this unwarranted provocation.

Turkish Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Catakli responded to Mitarachi on Twitter, saying he was distorting the events and telling lies.

Catakli accused Greece of pushing back 231 migrants in seven incidents that took place on Friday, adding that Turkey rescued them.

Thats a crime against humanity to slander the Turkish Coast Guard saving people you left to death. Thats typical of you, Catakli wrote.

Turkeys Coast Guard Command said it rescued the migrants from rubber boats off Izmir, Balikesir and Canakkale provinces.

The Greek coastguard said in one incident a boat carrying migrants tried to enter Greek territorial waters on Friday accompanied by a Turkish coastguard vessel. In another, two Turkish vessels tried to push a dingy with migrants into Greek waters.

In a third incident off the island of Lesbos, a Turkish coastguard vessel entered Greek territorial waters and harassed a Greek patrol boat, it said.

Nearly a million asylum seekers, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, crossed into Greece from Turkey on boats in 2015 at the start of Europes migration crisis. A year later, the European Union struck a deal with Ankara to stem the flow and numbers fell dramatically.

Mitarachi called on Turkey to live up to its commitments under the deal.

The neighbouring NATO allies are at odds over issues such as competing claims over their respective continental shelves, maritime rights, and air space in the Mediterranean, energy, ethnically split Cyprus, and the status of some islands in the Aegean Sea.

Underlining the tensions, Turkey last month protested against a deal between Greece, Israel and Cyprus for an undersea cable linking their electricity grids.

According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, Ankara believes the planned route for the cable runs through Turkeys continental shelf.

Exploratory talks are meant to lay the ground for formal negotiations, but the two countries have made little progress in more than 60 rounds of meetings since 2002 and cannot even agree on what issues to discuss.

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Greece accuses Turkey of trying to provoke it with migrant boats - Al Jazeera English

The recent immigration surge at the Texas border is manufactured by decades of America intervening to prop up right-wing, South American dictators. This faux crisis is the new threat used by Republicans to deflect attention from the forthcoming trials of those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

In Texas, the immigration crisis serves as a counter-narrative to the winter 2021 debacle under Gov. Greg Abbotts watch and the looming battle to rein in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

U.S. foreign policies have drained Latin American countries of their natural resources such as coffee, sugar, bananas, oil and cotton products while destabilizing their economies and making them interdependent, author Roberto Saviano wrote in The Migrant Caravan: Made in USA, published in 2019. When South American farmers shifted to harvesting cocoa leaves for cocaine and marijuana for consumption in America, the U.S. drug war went into full bloom.

Another example of U.S. exploitation is the infamous Iran-Contra affair in the late 1980s involving Ronald Reagans fall guy, Oliver North. Documents declassified from the National Security Archive cite North as informing Robert Owen, a liaison for the State Department, on Aug. 8, 1985, that a DC-6 which is being used for runs (to supply the Contras) out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into the U.S.

Our countrys history on immigration is a complex battle of ideology: One side is inextricably bound by bigotry; the other is tied to the spirit of generosity and renewal of America shaped by people who come here.

Immigrants take the low-paying, backbreaking jobs many Americans refuse to do. The Immigration Charade, written by Christopher Jencks in 2007, states that employers say that foreign-born workers tend to work harder, be more reliable, and complain less than the natives they can hire at the same wage. Unskilled immigrants have seldom finished secondary school, but they have overcome all kinds of obstacles both to get here and to stay here.

Of course, many of these immigrants would prefer to live in their own countries but hurricanes, climate-change crop failures and failed U.S. foreign policies have disrupted their economies. These are the political consequences of empire-building and massive immigration that Juan Gonzalez explains in Harvest of Empire.

About half of undocumented U.S. workers pay income tax. They help fund public schools and local government services by paying sales and property taxes like any resident. They contributed about $10.6 billion in state and local taxes in 2010, according to research from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

But what about undocumented migrants who use fake Social Security cards? The Social Security system has become reliant on their contributions as baby boomers retire.

Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, estimated that in 2010 about 1.8 million immigrants worked with fake or stolen Social Security cards but expects that number to reach 3.4 million by 2040. According to his calculations, undocumented immigrants paid $13 billion into the retirement trust fund that year, and only got $1 billion in benefits. Thats a nice tidy sum for baby boomers.

Former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party turbocharged the nastiest rhetoric about immigrants since Woodrow Wilson and calculatingly stoked xenophobic fears through Ann Coulters Adios America! turning its racist theories of immigrant invasion and infestation into existential threats aimed toward an implicitly evangelical conservative America.

Are the words In God We Trust only for show and exchange of capital?

Rafael Castillo is a writer and member of PEN America, the National Book Critics Circle and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

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Commentary: Migrant crisis at border was years in the making - San Antonio Express-News