W.H. Spox Bedingfield: ‘We’ve Made Tremendous Progress on the Situation at the Border’

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Ayman Mohyeldin Reports,” White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield stated that “we’ve made tremendous progress on the situation at the border” and “there’s a lot more to do, and I think what you heard from President Biden in his speech last night is his commitment to the long-term solution here.”

Bedingfield said, “I think there has been tremendous progress at the border and I think it’s important for people to hear. So, what we’ve seen is that the number of kids who are in Border Patrol custody, which is the thing that a lot of the media was focused on over the course of February and March, the number of kids in these Border Patrol facilities, the number of kids was, in mid-March, at about 5,000. And now, as of this week, it’s under 1,000. The Biden administration has moved quickly to move these kids out of Border Patrol facilities. We’re now, the average time that a kid is spending in a Border Patrol facility is now under 50 hours, which is down dramatically from where we were a couple of months ago. So, the administration has moved quickly to move these kids out of the most dangerous part of this process and being in the overcrowded Border Patrol facility and into HHS facilities that are, in and of themselves, temporary facilities. And we’re working…to unite those kids with family members in the United States, with sponsors in the United States. So, we’ve made tremendous progress on the situation at the border. Obviously, there’s a lot more to do, and I think what you heard from President Biden in his speech last night is his commitment to the long-term solution here.”

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