美联社
2021年3月22日，星期一，华盛顿，白宫新闻秘书珍·普萨基在白宫的新闻发布会上发言。(美联社照片/埃文·武奇)
华盛顿——白宫新闻秘书珍·普萨基(Jen Psaki)拒绝提供媒体进入边境巡逻设施的具体日期，这些设施暂时关押了数千名寻求在美国生活的移民儿童，但她周日表示，拜登政府致力于透明度，“我们正在努力尽快完成这项工作。”
截至周四，超过16，000名无人陪伴的儿童被政府拘留，其中约5，000人被关押在不符合标准的海关和边境保护设施中。
国会山的共和党议员一直呼吁政府向摄像头开放设施，声称当前的政策旨在防止公众“充分意识到”边境发生的事情。
共和党官员也指责拜登政府的行为导致更多中美洲人寻求进入美国。“这不是危机，这是那里主权的完全丧失，”共和党参议员说林赛·格雷厄姆南卡罗来纳州的人说。
格雷厄姆最近访问了边境，他说他看到了一个旨在容纳80名儿童的设施，其中大约有1000名儿童。他呼吁政府在对每个无人陪伴的未成年人进行“人口贩卖虐待”测试后将其拒之门外。
格雷厄姆周日表示:“如果你不这样做，到今年夏天，我们每月将有15万英镑。”。
美国当局报告称，2月份在南部边境遇到了10多万名移民，这是自2019年连续四个月以来的最高水平。
三月份每天平均约有5000人遭遇，如果这些数字持续整个月，这将比二月份增加约50%。
白宫传播主任凯特·贝丁菲尔德说，这种激增是周期性的。
“它们不是一届政府或另一届政府政策的结果。例如，它们是该地区天气灾害的结果。他们是人们逃离贫困和暴力的结果，”贝丁菲尔德说。“所以我们在2014年看到了峰值。我们在2019年看到了他们，当时特朗普政府出台了可能是最残忍的政策，即家庭分离，以阻止人们前来，他们仍然来了。”
拜登政府在周日的脱口秀节目中继续强调，美墨边境“仍然关闭”，大多数成年人都被拒绝入境。但是普萨基说，政府不会强迫孩子们踏上危险的旅程。
“他们正在逃离充满挑战的经济环境，飓风她说，在某些情况下，她会被起诉。“这并不意味着他们可以留在美国。这意味着他们的案件得到了裁决，我们希望人道地对待他们，确保他们在案件得到裁决时处于安全的地方。这就是我们在这里谈论的。”
前总统唐纳德·特朗普扩大和加固边境墙，同时倡导“零容忍”政策，这使得寻求美国庇护更加困难，并导致一些移民父母与子女分离。
根据联邦法律，没有父母到达边境的儿童应该在三天内从美国边境巡逻队的监管下转移到美国卫生和人类服务部经营的长期设施中，直到他们可以被释放给家人或担保人。
普萨基说，政府致力于提高透明度，并尽快提供对这些临时边境巡逻设施的访问。
“我们意识到我们正处于一场流行病之中。我们想保护这些孩子的安全，保护员工的安全，”普萨基说。
德克萨斯州参议员特德·克鲁兹周一呼吁总统让媒体陪同他去达拉斯的一个临时拘留设施。
克鲁兹在一封信中写道:“我再次敦促你停止否认现实，正视你的政策的后果，并允许媒体进入这些设施。”
普萨基和格雷厄姆在“福克斯周日新闻”上发表了讲话，贝丁菲尔德在美国广播公司的“本周”上接受了采访。
White House says it's working on access to migrant centers
WASHINGTON -- White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide a specific date for when the media will get access to Border Patrol facilities temporarily holding thousands of migrant children seeking to live in the United States, but said Sunday the Biden administration was committed to transparency and “we’re working to get that done as soon as we can.”
More than 16,000 unaccompanied children were in government custody as of Thursday, including about 5,000 in substandard Customs and Border Protection facilities.
Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been calling on the administration to open the facilities to the cameras, asserting that the current policy is designed to keep the public from “fully realizing” what is happening at the border.
Republican officials are also blaming the Biden administration for actions they say are leading more people from Central America to seek entry into the United States. “It’s not a crisis, it’s a complete loss of sovereignty down there,” Republican Sen.Lindsey Grahamof South Carolina said.
Graham recently visited the border and said he saw a facility designed to hold 80 children with about 1,000 in it. He called on the administration to turn away every unaccompanied minor after testing them for “human trafficking abuses.”
“If you don’t, we’ll have 150,000 a month by this summer,” Graham said Sunday.
U.S. authorities reported encounters with more than 100,000 migrants on the southern border in February, the highest since a four-month streak in 2019.
Encounters have averaged about 5,000 people per day throughout March, which would be about a 50% increase over February if those figures hold for the entire month.
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said the surge was cyclical.
“They’re not the result of one administration’s policies or another administration’s policies. They’re the result of, for example, weather disasters in the region. They’re the result of people fleeing poverty and violence,” Bedingfield said. “So we saw spikes in 2014. We saw them in 2019 when the Trump administration had perhaps the cruelest imaginable policies in place, family separation to try to deter people from coming, and they still came.”
The Biden administration continued to emphasize on the Sunday talk shows that the U.S.-Mexico border “remains closed” and that the majority of adults are being turned away. But Psaki said the administration was not going to force children to go back on a treacherous journey.
“They are fleeing challenging economic circumstances,hurricanes, prosecution in some scenarios,' she said. “It does not mean that they get to stay in the United States. It means their cases are adjudicated and we want to treat them humanely, make sure they are in a safe place while their cases are adjudicated. That’s what we’re talking about here.”
Former PresidentDonald Trumpexpanded and fortified border walls while championing “zero tolerance” policies that made it more difficult to seek U.S. asylum and led to some immigrant parents being separated from their children.
Under federal law, children arriving at the border without parents should be transferred within three days from U.S. Border Patrol custody to long-term facilities run by U.S. Health and Human Services until they can be released to family members or sponsors.
Psaki said the administration is committed to transparency and providing access to those temporary Border Patrol facilities as soon as it can.
“We are mindful of the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We want to keep these kids safe, keep the staff safe,” Psaki said.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called on the president to let the media accompany him to a temporary detention facility in Dallas on Monday.
“I again urge you to stop denying reality, confront the consequences of your policies, and allow the media access to these facilities," Cruz wrote in a letter.
Psaki and Graham spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” while Bedingfield was interviewed on ABC's “The Week.”
