White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during Thursday’s press briefing that the “dysfunction” of former President Donald Trump’s border policies left the Biden administration with a “very broken system.”
A reporter noted that President Joe Biden said the images coming from the border – which depict thousands of migrants sleeping in a tent city under a bridge in Texas – were “horrible.” Some Democrats have said that the images are similar to how the border looked under the Trump administration, and the reporter asked Psaki what Biden thinks about those comments.
“What our role is, and what the president has asked his outreach team, his national security team, homeland security team to do, is to explain clearly what the policy is and is not. We could not see it as any more different than the policy of the prior administration which the president feels and we all feel was inhumane, immoral, ineffective, wasn’t operationally working.” (RELATED: Hundreds Of Haitians Remain Trapped At Mexican Migrant Camp After Del Rio Port Of Entry Closure)
“And because of the dysfunction of it, we have led to a very broken system that we are dealing with today,” the press secretary continued. “So what he has asked all of us to convey clearly to the people who are understandably, have questions, are passionate, are concerned, as we are about the images that we have seen, is one, we feel those images are horrible and horrific.”
Psaki said that there is an ongoing investigation at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and promised that the investigation would “happen quickly.” She also added that horses would no longer be used in Del Rio, where images allegedly showed Border Patrol agents using reins to whip migrants. Border patrol has denied the allegations and said the reins were being used to control the horses.
“It’s also important for people to understand what our process and our immigration process is,” Psaki continued. “We are still under Title 42 because we are in a global pandemic so we are still operationalizing that. If people are not expelled under that, then there are a range of options.”