Rep. Fleischmann

Rep.

Fleischmann talks about his trip to the border with other House Republicans.

Criticizing the immigration policies of president joe biden after visiting the southern border with several other house republicans on monday, calling it a humanitarian crisis.

News 12's kenan scott spoke with the congressman and immigration experts about ways the federal government and local officials can respond.

U.s. house representative chuck fleischmann was just one of several house republicans to visit the southern border on monday.

Now after seeing a rise in illegal immigration numbers, he's blaming the biden administration's immigration policies for what he calls a humanitarian crisis.

"president biden's rhetoric and his actions are sadly inconsistent.

We need to sit down as americans and address this immediately."

Amid nearly 3,700 migrant children flooding the u.s.-mexico border and being held in detention centers for processing, the growing crisis has been making national headlines.

Utc political science lecturer dr. rita groh agrees that it is a crisis but not for the same reasons as representative fleischmann.

"the reason this is a humanitarian crisis is that you have a mass exodus of migrants that are leaving their country of origin in pursuit of another.

They're being pushed out of their country."

She says that a big part of the problem is a lack of resources to process this many migrants, many of whom are children.

"the border patrol, department of homeland security, united states citizen and immigration services do not have enough resources not just money, i'm talking about people on the ground to process all of these migrants."

Dr. groh says that the situation is exacerbated by a lack of accurate records on who exactly is coming through the detention centers and without an overhaul of the immigration system, the problem will likely take a while to sort out.

"this is going to be a slow process because even the detention centers, even ice, border patrol do not have an accurate record of who is in these detention centers."

The surge in migrants comes as house democrats unveil legislation this week that would create a pathway to citizenship for young people brought to the u.s. as children, commonly referred to as dreamers.

In chattanooga, kenan scott news 12