The President of the United States, Joe Biden, was photographed this Thursday in front of the Rio Grande (Rio Grande for Americans) with members of the border patrol in Brownsville (Texas). At the same time, his most likely rival in the November presidential election, Donald Trump, posed in front of the fence on the bank of the same river in Eagle Pass, also in Texas, about 500 kilometers away. The gestures were similar. However, the speeches were very different. While Biden offered his rival unity on immigration policy, Trump gave his toughest speech on immigration, speaking of an “invasion,” of the arrival of “men of fighting age” who look like “warriors.” “It’s like a war,” he said.
Biden spoke with border patrol and immigration officials before giving a conciliatory speech and urging former President Donald Trump to support legislation agreed by Republicans and Democrats to boost security at the border. “The bipartisan agreement on border security would be a victory for the American people,” he said, noting that it would give him the ability to “temporarily close the border,” which would be activated when the number of illegal border crossings reaches certain thresholds exceed .
“Friends, it’s very simple. It's time to act. “It is long past time to act,” Biden said in his speech. “They desperately need more resources,” he said at the Brownsville Border Patrol center, where about 50 officers were present. He has spoken over the past four years about officers working overtime and “making great sacrifices.” “It is time to take a step forward and give them much more staff and capacity. We also need more immigration judges to help us deal with the two million pending cases,” he said.
Border Patrol agents listen to Biden's speech at the Brownsville train station on February 29. Evan Vucci (AP)
“This bill was on track for passage in the U.S. Senate and then was derailed by partisan politics,” the president said during his speech. And then he turned directly to Trump: “We can do it together.” You know, and I know, that it is the toughest, most efficient and most effective border security law this country has ever seen. Why should you join me instead of playing politics with the issue and let's do it? Or I will join you,” he appealed to his rival.
Trump, on the other hand, didn't mince his words in Eagle Pass. He gave an inflammatory speech full of lies and xenophobic messages, which, as usual, had far-right overtones. In his rhetoric, he said immigrants have left prisons and institutions: “These are the people who come into our country and they come from prisons and they come from prisons and they come from mental institutions and they come from institutions and they are terrorists .” They introduce them into our country. And it’s terrible,” Trump said.
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“The United States is plagued by migrant crime, Biden. It is a new form of vicious violation of our country. This is migrant crime. We call it Biden migrant crime, but that’s a bit long-winded,” he also said. He spoke of the arrival of immigrants as an “invasion,” a “Joe Biden invasion,” referring to the fact that the arrivals were “men of fighting age” who looked like “warriors.” . “It’s like a war,” he said.
Republican presidential candidate and former President of the United States Donald Trump visits the United States-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, seen from Piedras Negras, Mexico.Go Nakamura (Portal)
He also repeated other of his nonsensical arguments, such as that the immigrants arriving speak languages never before heard in the United States. “We didn’t even have a translator who understood that language,” he claims, although in reality the vast majority are Latin American immigrants (most of them Venezuelans) who speak Spanish, a language common in both Eagle Pass and the United States Used extensively in Brownsville as well as in many other parts of the United States. The former president has promised “the largest deportation of illegal immigrants” if he returns to the White House.
For Biden, it was his second visit to the border as president, after traveling to El Paso in January last year. Trump's pressure has derailed a bill that would provide aid to Ukraine and Israel but also reforms to curb illegal immigration at the border with Mexico, which broke records during Biden's presidency. The border measures were a call from Republicans to green light aid to Ukraine and Israel, but when push comes to shove, they prefer to step back and continue to use the migration flow as an electoral weapon.
Legal immigration
Biden's policies of opening legal pathways for orderly migration to the United States while increasing penalties for illegal pathways have not stopped the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States. The legislation allows immigrants to seek asylum regardless of how they arrive, and they are arriving in such numbers that the capacity of an underfunded immigration system is overwhelmed. This effectively allows immigrants to settle while their cases are delayed for years.
Dozens of immigrants waited this Thursday at Xeriscape Park in Brownsville, just beyond the Mexican border crossing. Those who gather there have managed to get to the United States with papers, whether for family reunification or for other reasons. For many of them, the arrival was an odyssey lasting several months. José Antonio Romero, a 19-year-old Venezuelan from Mérida, is waiting for some friends who have not yet been able to cross. He wants to say goodbye to them before he leaves for Oceano, California. “I want to see my brother and work,” he explains.
Behind her, another Venezuelan woman speaks loudly to her relatives via video conference: “We’re crowning,” she tells them. She is euphoric. Ricardo, a 22-year-old Venezuelan, and Patrix, a 19-year-old Peruvian, are also enthusiastic. They are a couple and after crossing the border they make their way to Tulsa (Oklahoma), where his mother is. Ricardo, who began his journey in October, had to cross the Darién pass: “It was quite hard, the danger of running there is great, you have to climb several times, climb mountains, cross the river, but since I am young I don't think, “It cost that much.” “There's an inherent risk of being attacked and robbed,” he adds.
“Mexico is the hardest to get through,” says Patrix, “because since we came here it has been very difficult to go to Mexico City to make an appointment.” They don't let us get on the buses, we have to do everything on foot , they make us pay to go from city to city. There are kidnappings, robberies, a lot of things happen and not much is said about them,” he says.
The Venezuelans who have crossed the border arrived through the legal channels opened by the Biden administration. You initially have a two-year work permit. The idea is to open up these routes somewhat and increase repression against irregular entries to deter them. The theory sounds good, but in practice legal options have not eased the pressure at the border.
Brownsville is no longer a hotspot for illegal border crossings. A tour along the river near the city, a sister city of Matamoros on the other side of the border, this Thursday showed areas protected by barbed wire and numerous border patrols. This area is the one that the President visited to obtain information from the teams working on the ground and to which he promised this Thursday an effort so that they have more resources: “I promise you that we will fight like crazy, to get you.” “This bipartisan proposal,” he said. President.
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