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Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday requested that Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration grant media access to U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities at the Texas border. 

On Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released photos of the temporary facilities in Texas that are being used to process migrant children after the White House and CBP were pressed over why the media had not been given access to those facilities.

The Biden administration has come under scrutiny for the surge of migrants arriving at the border. Capacity at temporary holding facilities has become stretched after the administration said it would no longer expel unaccompanied minor children last month.

It's a fast-moving situation, described by the Biden administration as a "stressful challenge" and decried by critics of immigration as a "crisis." There are a lot of details we're still learning in real time.

This is a higher number than we've seen before. At the peak of the 2019 border crisis -- when there were overcrowded facilities and children sleeping on the ground -- there were around 2,600 unaccompanied children in Border Patrol custody, a former CBP official told CNN.

The treatment of kids in custody is one of the thorniest issues at the border. One of the largest public outcries we heard during the Trump administration came when monitors revealed squalid conditions inside CBP facilities where children were held. We haven't heard much about the current conditions in these facilities. But it's concerning, because the number of children arriving is outpacing the Biden administration's ability to place them in shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services. And due to limited capacity at shelters, children are being held in CBP facilities beyond the 72-hour limit the law requires.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has imposed a new import ban on seafood from a fleet of Chinese fishing vessels, after a year-long investigation uncovered what U.S. officials called signs of forced labor within the fleet's operations.

The agency said it identified at least 11 indicators of forced labor across the company's fleet, "including physical violence, withholding of wages, and abusive working and living conditions." The allegations include abuses against many Indonesian workers.

According to CBP officials, this is the first U.S. ban on imports from an entire fishing fleet, as opposed to individual vessels targeted in the past.

The number of asylum-seeking migrants, including unaccompanied minors, crossing the southwest border into the U.S. is soaring, leaving the Biden administration scrambling to find appropriate care and housing for thousands of children

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released the latest statistics on Wednesday showing agents encountered nearly 3,500 migrants a day during February 2021, a 28% increase over January. Among them, the number of children and families seeking to enter the U.S. more than doubled in the same period. And, the number of unaccompanied minors from Central America also rose 60% over January to more than 9,400.

"The children are approaching the border now because after fleeing their home countries in Central America, they have not been able to access the border for a year due to Title 42," Megan McKenna, a spokeswoman for Kids In Need of Defense, an advocacy group for unaccompanied minors, told NPR

Tens of thousands of immigrants from Central America and Mexico, including thousands of unaccompanied minors, are journeying to the border. In February, the US Customs and Border Protection says it tracked over 100,000 migrants crossing the southern border, almost a 30% increase over January. Nearly 10,000 were unaccompanied minors, and more than 14,000 of those minors are now in US custody.

Yet White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday refused to characterize the situation as a "crisis," instead, calling it a "circumstance."

That's right -- kids tightly packed in detention facilities, sleeping on mats on the floor with aluminum-like blankets. For all of the hue and cry from the left hammering former President Donald Trump for keeping "kids in cages" at our southern border, Biden has now served in two administrations -- first as vice president and now as President -- in which migrant children are being held in terrible conditions.

The number of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border in March was the most in at least 15 years, as agents for U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended nearly 172,000 people, according to Biden administration officials.

The administration has been struggling to handle the influx of children, who are not being turned away at the border. Facilities run by CBP are not designed to house children and teens. In March, there was progress, officials said. By the end of the month, an average of 507 children a day were being transferred out of CBP facilities, up from 276 per day a month earlier.

Civil rights groups and lawmakers demanded information from federal officials Monday following reports that dozens of Iranian-Americans were held up and questioned at the border as they returned to the United States from Canada over the weekend.

more than 60 Iranians and Iranian-Americans were detained and questioned for hours at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Washington. The delays followed security warnings that Iran might retaliate for President Donald Trump’s decision to kill a top Iranian general last week.

Unusual delays in clearing travelers of Iranian descent continued until Sunday afternoon but appeared to have ended by Monday

Has he kept the promises that helped get him here? And do his supporters care? A recent survey from New York University found that those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 thought he had broken fewer than one promise out of five. Those who voted for Hillary Clinton said he broke more than four out of five.

In reality, Mr. Trump has broken about half of 100 campaign promises, according to a tracker by PolitiFact. T

Supporters of Mr. Trump who spoke to The New York Times said overwhelmingly that they were pleased with how he had lived up to his pledges. Here’s a look at how he fared on some of his signature promises.

I am a refugee living in the United States and I know what it means to escape death. Still, I warn others not to come – they won’t be safe or welcome here

Don’t come here. If you are afraid for your life and you have no place to go, don’t pick this country. It is not safe for you here any more.

If you try to cross our borders, people in military uniform called border patrol agents, will arrest you, throw you in a freezing cage and subject you to all kinds of abuses. These agents who don’t speak your language will sit you down and interrogate you. It won’t matter if you didn’t understand their questions, they will write whatever they want in dozens of forms, make you sign them, and use them against you later as they try to deport you.

In theory, the rainy season here should last from late April to October, with a drier period in July and August known as the canícula – a regional peculiarity that requires two short harvests.

But the past decade has seen frequent, intense droughts and late rains due to unusually hot and dry canículas and prolonged years of El Niño – the warm phase of a complex weather cycle caused by increased Pacific surface temperatures.

“Over the past six years, the lack of rainfall has been our biggest problem, causing crops to fail and widespread famine,”

Of the 75 senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security, 20 are either vacant or filled by acting officials

The National Park Service, which like many federal agencies is full of vacancies in key posts, tried this week to fill the job of a director for the national capital region after hordes of visitors flocked to see the cherry blossoms near the National Mall, creating a potential public health hazard as the coronavirus continues to spread.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, workers are scrambling to order medical supplies on Amazon after its leaders, lacking experience in disaster responses, failed to prepare for the onslaught of patients at its medical centers.

The Biden administration is facing an increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children crossing into the United States, placing added strain on a system operating under limited capacity due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The pandemic has taken a dramatic toll on Latin America, where Covid-19 cases and deaths have soared and economies once projected to grow have been decimated. The region was also hit with two devastating hurricanes. The decline in economic growth in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service, is expected to worsen income inequality and poverty

The majority of border crossers since October are single adults, many of whom are from Mexico. In January, the US Border Patrol arrested more than 75,000 migrants on the southern border, up from around 71,000 in December, according to the latest data. Of those, single adults made up around 62,000 arrests.

China has since banned BBC World News from airing in the country and denied the abuse, telling CNN that "it is strictly forbidden to insult and abuse trainees in any way."

But the women's accounts add to a record that includes reports of forced abortions and sterilizations, high-tech surveillance, and Uyghur children being separated from their parents.

Either the United States and the world will finally go beyond tepid criticism and respond with real action, or we can forget about values, universal rights, and international law.

In the weeks since the President asked her to take charge of immigration from Central America, Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff have sought to make one thing clear: She does not manage the southern border.

Two White House officials familiar with the dynamic said Harris and her aides have emphasized internally that they want to focus on conditions in Central America that push migrants to the US southern border, as President Joe Biden tasked her to do. A record number of unaccompanied children crossed into the US this spring, and the throngs of desperate minors present a heart-rending problem as well as a political one.

After the announcement, Harris' aides appeared to "panic," according to one of the officials, out of concern that her assignment was being mischaracterized and could be politically damaging if she were linked to the border, which at the time was facing a growing number of arrivals.

Seeing the growing number of minors held in jail-like facilities near the U.S.-Mexico border, John Sanders can't help thinking of Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez.

Hernandez died of complications from the flu. So did Felipe Gomez Alonzo, 8, another child whom Sanders thinks about a lot. Jakelin Caal, 7, died of a bacterial infection.Sanders said kids who arrive at the border facilities are already physically and emotionally strained after weeks — if not months — of traveling under very difficult conditions.

At least five children died in custody or after being detained by federal immigration agents at the border during that surge in 2018 and 2019, when as many as 2,600 children were being held in border facilities.

The Trump administration has begun a pilot program in El Paso, Texas, aimed at speeding up the time it takes to adjudicate asylum cases, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials.

Currently, asylum officers conduct an interview wherein officers will decide whether an individual has a "credible fear of persecution" that could make them eligible for asylum in the United States. If an individual is found to have a credible claim, the individual is put into immigration proceedings, where a judge will eventually make the final determination.

The pilot program in El Paso accelerates that process.

The White House is continuing to defend itself against criticism from the left and right for reopening Trump-era shelters used to house unaccompanied teenagers crossing the border from Mexico.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the administration was forced to make the "tough choice" of reopening the facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, due to the number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border, which she explained meant taking responsibility for their care.

In January, more than 5,700 unaccompanied minors crossed the border, up from 4,850 in December and 4,500 in November, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP.