President Biden’s “border czar” is stepping down amid the surge of southern migrants that the White House has refused to acknowledge as a crisis.
Former US ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson will retire at the end of the month, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saying Friday that the move was “consistent with her commitment at the outset to serve in the Administration’s first 100 days.”
The move was announced less than a month after Jacobson admitted that the White House was sending “mixed messages” to migrants from Central and South America, saying “it is difficult at times to convey both hope in the future and the danger that is now.”
The move comes as the Biden administration is reportedly considering sending cash payments to Central Americans in a bid to prevent them from making the trek north and as Vice President Kamala Harris, tapped by Biden to handle the crisis, still has yet to visit the border.
Meanwhile, migrant parents already in the United States say they are not being given regular — if any — updates about the location or well-being of their children in federal custody. And it’s reportedly costing US taxpayers more than $60 million a week to care for 16,500 unaccompanied migrant teenagers and children now in federally run shelters.
Customs and Border Protection announced this week that the number of illegal immigrant encounters at the southern border has exploded — rising more than 71 percent since February.
Earlier Friday, a California man whose brother was slain by an illegal immigrant blasted Biden’s immigration policy, saying, “We absolutely have a crisis.”
“If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it’s not a cow, it’s a duck,” Jody Jones said on “Fox & Friends.”
“So don’t sit there and tell me there’s not a crisis down at the border, because there is.”
White House officials have repeatedly refused to call the situation a crisis, although press secretary Jen Psaki slipped up during a briefing last month and referred to the “crisis on the border” while discussing the shipment of COVID-19 vaccines to Mexico.
When a reporter noted her use of the word, Psaki quickly corrected herself and said, “Challenges on the border.”