US President Joe Biden urged migrants to not come to the United States

"Don't Come Over": Joe Biden To Migrants As Criticism Over Surge Grows

"Yes I can say quite clearly don't come across ... Don't leave your town or city or community," Joe Biden said in an interview with ABC News, addressing the migrants.

Washington, us : US President Joe Biden urged migrants to not come to the United States on Tuesday, as criticism mounted over a surge in people arriving at the southern border with Mexico -- including thousands of unaccompanied children.

"Yes I can say quite clearly don't come across ... Don't leave your town or city or community," he said in an interview with ABC News, addressing the migrants.

Speaking hours after his head of Homeland Security defended the administration's imigration policies, Biden also shrugged off claims that his dismantling of former president Donald Trump's tough stance had encouraged the surge, remarking that there had been similar surges in 2019 and 2020.

"The concept Joe Biden said 'come' - I heard the opposite day that they are coming because I'm a pleasant guy... Here's the deal, they are not ," he said.

On January 20, his first day in office, Biden scrapped several of Donald Trump's contentious immigration policies, including halting new construction of a border wall and proposing legislation to make a citizenship pathway for the nearly 11 million people living illegally within the US.

Republican critics say Biden's policies caused a pointy increase in migrants seeking to cross into the US illegally. 

The president spoke each day after top Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy visited the border in Texas with fellow Republican lawmakers and accused Biden of making a "crisis."

Migrant spikes 'not new'

Biden's chief of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday also defended the administration's immigration policies.

Mayorkas acknowledged the us was "on pace" to encounter more migrants at the border than at any time in 20 years , but said such spikes were "not new," having also occurred in 2019, 2014 and earlier.

"The situation we are currently facing at the southwest border may be a difficult one," Mayorkas said during a statement. 

"We are keeping our borders secure, enforcing our laws, and staying faithful our values and principles."

Mayorkas said the increase in unaccompanied children -- some as young as six or seven -- comes from ending the policies of Trump, whose administration "cruelly expelled young children into the hands of traffickers."

"They are vulnerable children and that we have ended the prior administration's practice of expelling them," he said.

The Biden administration continues to expel most single adults and other people traveling in families.

In February, the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) arrested about 100,000 people at the southern border -- including nearly 9,500 unaccompanied children -- a 28 percent skip January.

Mayorkas blasted the Trump administration for having cut aid to El Salvador , Guatemala and Honduras meant to tackle the basis causes of migration like violence and therefore the impacts of natural disasters.

Holding facilities for apprehended migrants are crowded, Mayorkas said, noting authorities had not "had the capacity to intake the amount of unaccompanied children we've been encountering."

Complicating conditions, pandemic-related physical distancing protocols have further reduced space, said Mayorkas, who has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist activate additional facilities.

Cuban-born Mayorkas said his parents, who brought him to the US as an infant, "understood the hope and promise of America."

"Today, young children are arriving at our border thereupon same hope," he said. "We can do that ."