JOSH LEDERMAN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden says the U.S. shouldn’t think of unaccompanied children showing up at the border as someone else’s children. He says — quote — “These are our kids.”

Biden is asking for help from attorneys and legal groups to represent immigrant children apprehended at the border. He says the rest of the world will judge the U.S. by how it treats these children.

Biden says he understands the utter despair that leads parents to pay unscrupulous people to smuggle their kids into the U.S.

But Biden warns the U.S. will have to send back some children to bad environments because they don’t legally qualify for asylum.

Biden also says Central American governments are unprepared to make the tough domestic decisions needed to address such problems in their countries.

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