WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden heads to the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, his first trip there as president after two years of harassment from Republicans who criticized him as lax on border security, while that the number of immigrants increases dramatically.
Biden is expected to spend several hours in El Paso, Texas, currently the largest corridor for illegal crossings, largely due to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, crime and poverty in their country. They are among the migrants from four countries who are now being quickly deported under new rules approved by the Biden administration last week.
The president is expected to meet with border officials to discuss migration, as well as the growing trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which is causing a surge in overdoses in the United States.
via the Associated Press
Biden will visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and meet with nonprofits and faith-based groups that support migrants arriving in the United States. It is unclear whether Biden will speak to immigrants.
“The president is looking forward to seeing for himself what the state of border security looks like,” said John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman. “It’s something he wanted to see for himself.”
Biden’s border security announcement and his visit to the border are aimed in part at dampening political noise and lessening the impact of future immigration investigations promised by House Republicans. But any lasting solution will require action from a deeply divided Congress, where multiple efforts to enact sweeping change have failed in recent years.
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas offered faint praise for Biden’s decision to visit the border, and that, too, was notable in the current political climate.
“They need time to learn from some of the experts I rely on the most, including local and law enforcement officials, landowners, non-profit organizations, US Customs and Border Protection officials and agents and people making a living in border communities on the front lines of its crisis,” Cornyn said.
John Moore via Getty Images
From El Paso, Biden will continue south to Mexico City, where he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada will meet on Monday and Tuesday for a summit of North American leaders. Immigration is on the agenda.
In El Paso, where migrants gather at bus stops and parks before continuing on their way, Border Patrol agents have increased security ahead of Biden’s visit.
“I think they’re trying to send a message that they’re going to check people’s documented status more consistently, and if you’re not prosecuted, they’re going to pick you up,” said Ruben Garcia of Buna Dress Aid. group from El Paso.
Migrants and asylum seekers fleeing violence and persecution have increasingly found that protection in the United States is available primarily to those who have money or the ability to find someone to support them financially.
Jose Natera, a Venezuelan migrant from El Paso who hopes to seek asylum in Canada, said he has no prospects of finding an American sponsor and is now reluctant to apply for asylum in the United States because he fears being sent to Mexico.
John Moore via Getty Images
Mexico “is a terrible country where there is crime, corruption, cartels and even the police persecute you,” he said. “They say people who are thinking of entering illegally won’t stand a chance, but at the same time I don’t have any sponsors. … I came to this country to work. I didn’t come here to play.”
The number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border has risen sharply during Biden’s first two years in office. There were more than 2.38 million outages in the year ended Sept. 30, the first time the number topped 2 million. The administration has struggled to clamp down on crossings, reluctant to take tough measures similar to those of the Trump administration.
The policy changes announced last week are Biden’s biggest move yet to crack down on illegal border crossings and will displace tens of thousands of migrants arriving at the border. At the same time, 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela will be able to come to the United States legally as long as they travel by plane, get a sponsor and pass background checks.
The United States will also turn back migrants who have not first sought asylum in a country they passed through on their way to the United States.
The changes have been welcomed by some, especially leaders in cities where migrants have multiplied. But Biden has been criticized by immigrant advocacy groups, who have accused him of taking steps modeled after the former president.
“I don’t agree with comparing ourselves to Donald Trump,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, highlighting some of his most maligned policies, including separating migrant children from their parents.
“This is not the president,” he said.
For all his international travel during his 50 years of public service, Biden hasn’t spent much time at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The only visit he could point to the White House was Biden’s border rush while he was campaigning for president in 2008. He sent Vice President Kamala Harris to El Paso in 2021, but she was criticized for detouring in much of the action from El Paso. it wasn’t the transit center, it is now.
President Barack Obama made a 2011 trip to El Paso, where he toured border operations and the Paso Del Norte International Bridge, but was later criticized for not returning as tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors entered the United States since Mexico.
Trump, who has made tightening immigration a signature issue, has made several trips to the border. During one visit, he slipped into a small border station to inspect cash and drugs seized by officers. On a trip to McAllen, Texas, then the center of a growing crisis, he made one of his most repeated claims that Mexico would pay for a border wall.
American taxpayers ended up footing the bill after Mexican leaders flatly rejected the idea.
“NO,” Enrique Peña Nieto, then president of Mexico, tweeted in May 2018. “Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, never. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”
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