As a surge of unaccompanied migrant children seeking entry to America strains the U.S.-Mexico border, Sen. Chris Murphy called for the expansion of the refugee program and a more efficient asylum application process.

“There is a humanitarian crisis today in Central America and it is being reflected on our border,” said Murphy, who traveled to El Paso, Texas, on Friday with a bipartisan group of senators to survey conditions in migrant detention facilities.

Border apprehensions fell sharply in April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic closed the southwestern border of the U.S. but have climbed steadily every month since then, according to the Pew Research Center. The Biden administration warned last week that the United States expects to make more migrant apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border this year than at any point in the last two decades.

Confronting the fallout of the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies, the Biden administration is now faced with caring for thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who have appeared at the border, as well as rebuilding an immigration system that was largely dismantled over the last four years.

Murphy, the new chair of the Senate subcommittee tasked with writing the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, argued that one of the greatest strains on the border is that the Trump administration halted an Obama-era policy enabling people to file asylum in their own countries.

“Right now, the only way for these kids to apply for asylum is to show up at our border. We should allow them to apply for asylum in their home country. That will be part of the solution to stop a flow of unaccompanied migrants to our border,” Murphy said.

Recounting his trip to the border, Murphy described detention facilities with more than 100 migrant children per room, with mattresses only a few inches apart. After four to five days in the facilities, most children are moved to group homes and then are reunited with family members in the United States, where they can make their asylum claim, he added.

“The conditions are better than 2019. These are not cages. There are now childcare workers and medical professionals, but I still wouldn’t want my child in these detention facilities for more than 30 seconds,” he said.

Chris George, the executive director of Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS), the New Haven-based refugee resettlement agency, said that refugee organizations are eager to help new refugee families find their footing in America.

In 2016, Connecticut welcomed more than 1,000 refugees, during a year when 85,000 refugees entered the United States, he said. The Trump administration cut the number of refugees entering the country down to 15,000; the Biden administration has said it aims to expand that capacity to up to more than 100,000 people.

“We can do both: we can deal with the crisis at the border ... and at the same time we can increase the refugee resettlement program,” George said.

Murphy acknowledged that there was no simple panacea for the nation’s overburdened immigration system. While the Biden administration is no longer separating migrant children from their parents at the border or prosecuting parents, he said, detention facilities remain crowded and migrants have limited pathways for asylum or refugee resettlement.

“I don’t think there’s any good answer. If you don’t allow the kids in, then you’re leaving them for dead in Northern Mexico. If you’re allowing the kids and their parents in, then you’re perhaps creating a capacity issue that we simply couldn’t deal with at the border,” Murphy said.