WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — President-elect Donald Trump signaled he plans to use military assets to carry out mass deportations, though his allies said the deportations will start with violent criminals.
At the Capitol on Tuesday, a group of activists and members of Congress urged President Joe Biden to take action before he leaves office.
“We’re very concerned that we’re going to have a lot of families that are essentially left orphaned,” said Julietta Lopez from the Hispanic Federation.
The group called on President Biden to grant temporary protected status to undocumented migrants from Ecuador. The move allows migrants to stay and work in the U.S., legally, if their homelands are considered unsafe.
“We agree being undocumented is a problem,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “But our solution, instead of turning the military on our own people, is to document them.”
Republican lawmakers, meantime, keyed in on children crossing the border alone.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s crisis at the border has led to trafficked, missing and exploited children,” said Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) at a hearing on Tuesday.
Department of Homeland Security statistics show between October 2023 and August 2024, 103,474 children crossed the border illegally, by themselves. An Inspector General report from the Department of Homeland Security said between FY 2019-2023, 32,000 unaccompanied children didn’t show up for their immigration hearings, which is how federal authorities can verify their health and safety.
Democrats said they would work with Republican leadership in Congress and the White House on immigration, where they can.
