MSNBC’s Soboroff: Could Still Be ‘Kids in Cages’ During Biden Administration

Wednesday, MSNBC contributor Jacob Soboroff reacted to President-elect Joe Biden claiming 2 million migrants may arrive at the United States’ borders if the nation does not rewrite border and asylum rules.

While President Donald Trump was widely criticized for policy that resulted in immigrant children being kept in cages, Soboroff speculated on “Morning Joe” that there will continue to be “kids in cages” during the Biden administration.

“It doesn’t sound like they will be ready to go on day one, Willie,” Soboroff said when asked if the Biden administration will be able to fix the problems at the border immediately. “I talked to a transition official yesterday; they are sort of hedging their bets. I don’t think that they want, you know, their sort of forward messages like the president-elect said: 2 million people coming on day one. But there are a lot of worried advocates, and I have to be completely honest with you. The idea that there’s going to be a new approach between Mexico and the Central American countries and the United States of America depends on what a new approach means. That was the language that the president-elect used in the transition in a readout not too long ago about his conversation with President López Obrador.”

“If a new approach means there are still children suffering, if migrants are coming and dying on their journey here, if they’re ending up incarcerated for an extended period of time, advocates are not certain that there will no longer be kids in cages, as Victoria said,” he continued. “You know, even though there may be a humane approach to what the Biden administration wants to do at least in words, it is a very entrenched system that has been very broken for a very long time. Family separations didn’t happen just because of Donald Trump. It was decades, as you said. You know, I wrote a book about this. In the book, I write about how decades of failed deterrence policy, punitive policy led to the point where like this Donald Trump was able to separate thousands of children and traumatize them for life. It will take a lot of work and a lot of effort to unwind all of that, and while I don’t doubt that the Biden administration wants to do that, it is much more complicated, and I think that they’re alluding to that, than being able to show up on day one and do all of that.”

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