Mayorkas urges patience at southern border, says Trump 'dismantled system'

Martha Raddatz. — (Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/ABC)

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday urged patience when it comes to the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

There has been an influx of migrants at the southern border, many of them unaccompanied minors who are being held at Border Patrol facilities, which are not meant for children, for longer periods of time. ABC News' Martha Raddatz, who was hosting Sunday's edition of This Week from the border, pressed Mayorkas on the issue, reading him a tweet sent from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who visited a border facility and described a harrowing scene involving a frightened young girl.

Mayorkas said the Biden administration has a plan to build capacity at shelters and help either reunite children with their families or other guardians or transfer them to safer facilities. "Martha, it takes time," he said, arguing the Trump administration would have turned the minors away. "When I say it takes time, I mean it, because we're dealing with a dismantled system. And we did not have the ordinary safe and just transition from one administration to another."

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Mayorkas repeated the argument that the Trump administration had set things in motion on multiple networks Sunday. Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.