The U.S. is experiencing a major surge of migrants at the southern border, with increasing encounters with U.S. Custom and Border Protection officials, and growing tensions on Capitol Hill. 

In the final months of the Trump administration, border encounters between officials and migrants hit a major spike. In December 2020, numbers reached as high as 74,000.

Nearly 100,000 migrants were detained on the border in February 2021, the highest monthly total since a surge in May 2019.

The biggest increase has come from families and children traveling alone, making up 29% of the encounters at the border in February, up from 13% two months earlier.

This growing number is forcing U.S. officials to scramble to find housing option and taking steps to speed up their release into the country. Thanks to a court order, minors must also be removed from border control custody within 72 hours and then moved into shelters run by Health and Human Services until a parent or guardian claims them.

Border agents are also conducting a record number of search-and-rescue missions for migrants on the southern border.

A number of factors have played into the new surge of migrants at the border, including economies ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, two major hurricanes that pummeled Central America in November of last year and worsening poverty and violence throughout parts of Latin America.

The new Biden White House has also given migrants more hope about their prospects in the U.S.

Under the Trump administration, a number of harsher policies were implemented to curb migrants and asylum seekers from coming to the U.S., including a “Migrant Protection Protocol,” forcing migrants to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court.

President Joe Biden undid a number of Trump’s policies, though he’s kept in place Trump’s pandemic-related expulsion powers, expecting children who are traveling alone. 

Biden is asking for Congress to give $4 billion to address the root of the crisis.

U.S. Republicans have seized the opportunity to criticized of the Biden administration’s handling of the situation on the border.

“It’s more than a crisis. This is a human heartbreak,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said, during a press conference with a delegation of a dozen House Republicans in El Paso, Texas.

Some Republicans are faulting Biden’s rolling back of Trump’s policies, lambasting him for halting the construction of his predecessor’s signature border wall project.

In early March, Texas Governor Greg Abbott deployed state troopers and the national guard towards to border, claiming, with no evidence, that migrants were spreading the coronavirus.

Biden, for his part, has pushed back against this criticism.

Along with ending Trump policies and seeking foreign aid, the Biden White House is looking speed up the release of children to parents, relatives, and other guardians in the U.S.

But in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Biden defended his policies, while urging those considering journeying to the U.S. to stay in their country.

“Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don’t come over,” Biden said.

Democrats in Congress have also pushed back against these claims, arguing that Trump’s policies are the roots of the current situation on the border. 

House Democrats made some political progress Thursday, passing a gateway for citizenship for Dreamers, migrant farm workers and immigrants who’ve fled war or natural disasters.

Lawmakers approved one bill offering legal status to 2 million Dreamers, young people brought to the country illegally as children, and thousands of migrants admitted for humanitarian reasons.

But Republicans have opposed the new bills, insisting that any immigration legislation music bolster security on the border.

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