Psaki Fires Back at Reporter Who Asks if There’s ‘Limit’ to Number of Kids US Will Take at Border: Should We Send 10 Year-Olds Back?

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had a very pointed rejoinder to a reporter who asked if there is a “limit or a cap” to the number of unaccompanied kids the U.S. will accept at the border.

At Psaki’s most recent briefing, Fox News White House correspondent Kristin Fisher was one of several reporters to press the issue of unaccompanied minors whom the Biden administration has refused to turn away at the border, and the conditions under which they are being housed.

Along the way, Fisher asked “Is there a limit or a cap to the number of unaccompanied minors that are going to be allowed into the U.S.?”

“A limit or a cap?” Psaki asked, then turned the question around by saying “So should we send some kids, who are 10, back at a certain point? Is that what you’re asking me?”

“I’m not setting the policy here; I’m just asking you what the Biden administration’s policy is,” Fisher said, then clarified her question.

“Is there a limit to the number of children that will be allowed in? I mean, the numbers we’re hearing now: 565 on average, every day. I’m just curious what the — what the endgame is here. How many, ultimately, would be allowed in?” she asked.

Psaki replied by citing the situation the Biden administration faced when President Joe Biden was inaugurated, telling Fisher that “when we came into office, there existed about 13,000 permanent beds in HHS ORR permanent and influx shelter system facilities during the last administration. Thousands of these beds — approximately half — were taken offline due to COVID. Staffing was also reduced to put it on par with the new reduced capacity. This was sufficient for the prior administration — so this is how we got here — because they were expelling children, in addition to families and single adults.”

“We decided, as you all know, that we will be more humane about how we approach this,” Psaki continued. “There wasn’t operational capacity built. The prior administration also did not consider that there were other mitigation efforts like masking, improved ventilation, cohorting, and other measures that would contain the spread of COVID. There’s now revised CDC guidance, which means there’s greater capacity in these facilities where we can expedite children — expedite getting children into them. There are — we are taking steps to ensure that when kids come to the border, we look and see if they have a phone number in their pocket so we can call the family member and get them to those family members as quickly as possible.”

Psaki went on to repeat her earlier theme, concluding her response by saying “Our policy continues to be: We’re not going to send a 10-year-old back across the border. That was the policy of the last administration. That’s not our policy here.”

Watch above via The White House.