Biden:

And the reason why so many people were leaving, we learned, was that not only gang violence and trafficking and cartels, but natural disasters, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes. And so it’s not like someone sits around a hand-hewnen [sic] — hand-hewn table somewhere in Guatemala and says, “I’ve got a great idea: Let’s sell everything we have, give the money to a coyote, have him take our kids or us to the border of America, take us across, leave us in the desert. We don’t speak the language. Won’t that be fun?”

One of the ways we learned is that if you deal with the problems in country, it benefits everyone. It benefits us, it benefits the people, and it grows the economies there.

Unfortunately, the last administration eliminated that funding — did not engage in it, did not use it — even though there was over $700 million to help get this done. We’re reinstituting that program. And there are — as I said, there are many factors as to why people leave in the first place.

But this is — this is the — the source of one of the reasons why we’ve had such a — before we took office, in the midst of the last administration’s somewhat draconian policies of separating children from their parents, et cetera, what happened was that we — we found that there were a serious spike in the number of people heading to the southern border, even in the midst of that. And as — as Alejandro can tell you, is that was because there were serious natural disasters that occurred in those countries. They were coming north, and we did nothing to do any — much about it.

So this new surge we’re dealing with now started with the last administration, but it’s our responsibility to deal with it humanely and to — and to stop what’s happening.

And so, this increase has been consequential, but the Vice President has agreed — among the multiple other things that I have her leading — and I appreciate it — agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept re- — the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders — at their borders.

We’re already talking with Mexico about that; she’s already done that. We’re going to be dealing with a full team now that we have to be able to deal with the problem here at home, but also to deal with it now in terms of in country.

And I can think of nobody who — who is better qualified to do this than a former — this is a woman who ran the second-largest attorney general’s office in America — after the U.S. — after the United States Attorney General — in the state of California, and has done a great deal upholding human rights, but also fighting organized crime in the process.