Washington – President Biden visited the US-Mexico border on Sunday, his first trip there as president after two years of persecution by Republicans who have hammered him as soft on border security while the number of migrants crossing spirals soars.
In El Paso, Texas, Mr. Biden visited a migrant center and walked along a section of the border wall. He was joined by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, several Democratic congressmen from the area, the Mayor of El Paso, and several local charity leaders.
Mr. Biden was greeted upon landing by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who handed Mr. Biden a letter in which Abbott outlined five ways he could address the border crisis. Abbott, who has urged Mr Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to visit the border, told reporters he thinks it is “the President’s first visit to the border in two years in office, it’s breathtaking and amazing and outrageous.” .”
Located on the southwestern edge of Texas, El Paso is currently the largest corridor for illegal crossings, due in large part to Nicaraguans fleeing oppression, crime and poverty in their country. They are among migrants from four countries who are now being swiftly deported under new rules enacted by the Biden administration last week.
The President was due to meet with border officials to discuss migration and the growing trade in fentanyl and other synthetic opioids that are skyrocketing overdoses in the United States
President Joe Biden speaks with Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, second from left, as they walk along a section of the U.S.-Mexico border Sunday, January 8, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is on the right. Andreas Harnik / AP
“The President is very much looking forward to seeing firsthand what the border security situation is like,” said John Kirby, White House national security spokesman, ahead of Mr. Biden’s arrival. “It’s something he wanted to see for himself.”
Mr. Biden’s border security announcement and visit to the border are designed in part to blunt political noise and soften the impact of upcoming immigration probes promised by House Republicans. But any lasting solution will require action from a sharply divided Congress, where several attempts at sweeping change have failed in recent years.
“All of these executive branch efforts are really just temporary patches, whether it’s Title 8, whether it’s Title 42, when we have to make sure Congress acts,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat. Mr. Biden in El Paso told Face the Nation.
Escobar said she “ran into a brick wall” from Republicans and Democrats trying to pass legislative changes to address border issues.
“The executive branch is not the only branch of government that has to do its job,” she said.
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas weakly praised Mr. Biden’s decision to visit the border, and even that was noteworthy in the current political climate.
“He needs to take the time to learn from some of the experts I rely on most, including local officials and law enforcement, landowners, nonprofit organizations, US Customs and Border Protection officials and agents, and people who make a living.” in frontier communities on the frontier, frontlines deserve its crisis,” Cornyn said.
Soldiers from the Texas National Guard stand guard at the U.S.-Mexico border January 7, 2023, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. John Moore/Getty Images
From Texas, Biden traveled south to Mexico City, where he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada will meet for a summit of North American leaders on Monday and Tuesday. Immigration is on the agenda. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met Biden at the airport Sunday night and rode with him in the presidential limousine to Biden’s hotel.
In El Paso, where migrants congregate at bus stops and in parks before continuing their journey, border patrol officials have tightened security ahead of the president’s visit.
“I think they’re trying to send a message that they’re going to be more rigorous in checking people’s documented status, and if you haven’t been processed, they’re going to pick you up,” said Ruben Garcia of the Proclamation House El Passo relief group.
Migrants and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and persecution are increasingly finding that protection in the United States is primarily available to those who have money or who are smart enough to find someone to vouch for them financially.
Jose Natera, a Venezuelan migrant in El Paso who hopes to apply for asylum in Canada, said he has no prospects of finding a US sponsor and he is now reluctant to apply for asylum in the US because he is afraid to be sent to Mexico.
Mexico “is a terrible country where there is crime, corruption, cartels and even police persecution,” he said. “They say that people who are thinking of entering illegally have no chance, but at the same time I have no sponsor. … I came to this country to work. I didn’t come here to play.”
The number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border has increased dramatically in Mr. Biden’s first two years in office. In the year ended September 30, there were more than 2.38 million stops, the first time the number surpassed 2 million. The administration has struggled to crack down on transitions and is reluctant to adopt tough measures similar to those taken by the Trump administration.
The policy changes announced last week are Biden’s biggest move yet to curb illegal border crossings and will turn away tens of thousands of migrants arriving at the border. At the same time, every month 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela are given the chance to enter the US legally, as long as they travel by air, find a sponsor and pass background checks.
The US will also turn away migrants who do not first seek asylum in a country they passed through en route to the US
The Biden administration will allow migrants in central and northern Mexico to schedule appointments to seek asylum at a U.S. port of entry through a cellphone app, CBP One.
Escobar, the Texas congresswoman, said most migrants fleeing their homelands have cellphones because they use them to communicate with each other and family back home, but she urged other aspects of the US government to take more action.
“We need far more involvement from the State Department, especially for those who don’t have access to this type of technology. We need a far broader education,” she said. “Many of the refugees I have spoken to, especially in the last few weeks, have no idea what an asylum procedure is. Your idea is that I’m going to the limit, I’m looking for a job. And I will help my family, which of course we all would. So there is still a lot to do.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters aboard Air Force One that the government was trying to “incentivize a safe and orderly route and take out the smuggling organizations,” saying the policy was “not a ban at all,” but an attempt to Protecting migrants from the trauma that smuggling can cause.
The changes announced by the president have been welcomed by some, particularly leaders in cities where migrants congregate. But Mr Biden has been angered by immigrant groups who have accused him of taking measures modeled after those of the former president.
“I have a problem comparing us to Donald Trump,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pointing to some of his most maligned policies, including separating immigrant children from their parents.
“That’s not this president,” she said.
For all of his international travels in his 50 years of public service, Mr. Biden has not spent much time at the US-Mexico border.
The only visit the White House could point to was his drive at the border while he was running for president in 2008. He sent Vice President Kamala Harris to El Paso in 2021, but she was criticized for largely bypassing the action because El Paso wasn’t the center of intersections it is now.
President Barack Obama made a trip to El Paso in 2011 to tour border operations and the Paso Del Norte International Bridge, but he was later criticized for not returning when tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors entered the United States from Mexico.
Trump, who has made hardening immigration his trademark, has traveled to the border several times. On one visit, he huddled into a small border post to inspect cash and drugs seized by agents. During 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 to be built.
In the end, American taxpayers footed the bill after Mexican leaders flatly rejected the idea.
“NO,” tweeted Enrique Peña Nieto, then-President of Mexico, in May 2018. “Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, never. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”
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