Miller-Meeks: ‘Congress must immediately act to address the disorder at the border’

As U.S. officials race to address the rising number of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks blamed President Joe Biden's administration for rolling back Trump-era immigration policies that turned unaccompanied minors away at the border and for halting border wall construction.

'You send the message that the border is not open to anybody to cross,” Miller-Meeks told CNN Newsroom on Tuesday. 'We shouldn't be encouraging minors to come across unaccompanied.”

Miller-Meeks, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, on Monday joined a delegation of Republican lawmakers led by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on a trip to El Paso, Texas, to meet with Border Patrol agents and assess the situation on the ground.

Members toured the El Paso Central Processing Center and border fence, and spoke with Border Patrol agents about the challenges they are facing.

'We have unaccompanied minors crossing illegally, smugglers and traffickers bringing narcotics, individuals on the terror watch list, and positive COVID-19 tests crossing our border with Mexico,” Miller-Meeks said in a statement. 'We need to be doing more to support our brave Customs and Border Patrol agents. They are putting their lives at risk every day and facing physical, mental, and health challenges that are going unaddressed. Congress must immediately act to address the disorder at the border.”

Miller-Meeks, in a YouTube video from the Santa Teresa crossing, stood next to a partially built section of border wall.

'With the new fencing, you also have technology adaptations, which are extremely critical for being able to control our border,” including sensors and video monitors that can detect movement both above and below ground, Miller-Meeks said.

'This border crisis is disorder at the border from the executive orders of the current administration and needs to be addressed,” she said. 'So, our border patrol is working diligently in a humanitarian way to be able to treat unaccompanied minors, to be able to treat families” and stem what she said has become a 'humanitarian crisis.”

'So we do need to address this, and we need to address this in a bipartisan way working with the current administration to put a stop to the surge that is happening now” as a result of getting rid of the policies of the former administration, 'which were working,” Miller-Meeks said.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday defended a policy of allowing teens and children crossing by themselves to remain in the country, part of Biden's promise that his administration would adopt a 'more humane” approach to undocumented immigrants and those seeking asylum in the U.S.

The number of migrants attempting to cross the border is at the highest level since 2019, and is on pace to rise to hit a 20-year peak.

Biden administration officials have attributed the surge to a number of factors, including the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic in Central America and two recent hurricanes in the region. U.S. officials have also conceded that smugglers have likely encouraged people to try to cross under the new administration.

Republicans in Congress have claimed that Biden's support for immigration legislation and decision to allow people to make legal asylum claims has become a magnet for migrants. Mayorkas, though, noted that there have been surges in the past, even under former president Donald Trump, whose zero-tolerance campaign separated migrant children from their families and forced people seeking asylum to do so in Central America or remain in Mexico.

Under the Biden administration, migrants who are under 18 years old are being allowed to remain in the country while the government decides whether they have a legal claim to residency, either under asylum law or otherwise.

The U.S. is continuing to expel most single adults and families either to Mexico or to their countries of origin, according to the Associated Press.

The move is a reversal of Trump-era policy whereby minors were required to wait in Mexico despite having the right to seek protection under federal law.

Critics attacked the aggressive deportation and detention strategy as unnecessarily cruel. Mayorkas took swipes at the Trump administration for dismantling the asylum system that would have enabled a more 'orderly” immigration system, cutting aid to Central America and failing to vaccinate Border Patrol agents.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.