White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox & Friends Tuesday that Congress should “stop denying what you see in front of you” regarding the crisis at the border -- and do something.
Citing figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Tuesday, Conway said that migrants were facing a “perilous journey and a humanitarian crisis at the border.”
“In the fiscal year so far, we’ve had 104 of these so-called caravans with at least 100 people,” she said. “Two years ago, fiscal year 2017, we had exactly 2. We’ve gone from 2 to 104. Stop denying what you see in front of you. We’ve got people still searching for the elusive collusion and will deny what’s right in front of them.
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“There was over 100,000 migrants presented at the border just last month alone, that was a 35 percent jump from February from the month before… For years, a decade really, most of them were single men from Mexico and you can return them very easily to their home country. Now you have 8,000 or so unaccompanied minors last month, you have the family units from the northern triangle countries, it is a perilous journey and a humanitarian crisis at the border.
CPB said that more than 103,000 migrants were turned away from or apprehended at the border last month, an increase of nearly 106 percent over the same period last year.
In all, CBP said it apprehended 92,607 people, including 53,077 family units (a 45.3 percent increase over February) and 8,975 unaccompanied minors (a 31 percent increase over February). Another 10,885 migrants were deemed "inadmissible" by immigration authorities.
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The total number of 103,492 apprehensions or rejections is the highest of any month over at least the past six years.
Conway continued: “Anybody who can look at me with a straight face and tell me that they know what happens to those young children once they’re released into the United States is lying. It’s wishful thinking that they’re ‘oh they’re reunited with family members and sponsors and they’re gainfully employed and life is wonderful, roses and lollipops after that.’
"You don’t know where they are. You don’t know who’s human-trafficked, who’s murdered, who’s with a gang. I’ve got girls 14, 11 and 9, all three of them within the range of the girls being pumped with birth control and pregnancy tests because we know this journey is perilous. Stop lying and start doing.”
When asked about potential solutions, Conway suggested fixing the TVPRA [Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000], calling it a “magnet for recycling children.”
She also called on a fix for the Flores Settlement, which limits the time immigration services detain unaccompanied minors to 20 days.
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The CBP’s numbers were announced two days after the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in a shakeup orchestrated by President Trump, who has been frustrated by his administration's inability to stem the tide of migrants from Central America and other parts of the world.
Fox News' Samuel Chamberlain contributed to this report.
