The leader of the Border Patrol Agents Union has criticized President Joe Biden for failing to meet migrants or ordinary officials during his Sunday visit to El Paso, Texas.
Brandon Judd said Monday his members are angry that Biden and the national media have been given a staged overview of conditions at the border.
“Every single Border Patrol agent I’ve spoken to is extremely frustrated and upset by what happened yesterday,” the President of the National Border Patrol Council told .
“They’re upset that he wasn’t ready to see what’s really going on. They are upset that they cleaned everything up.
“They’re upset that he knew he was going to bring the mainstream media with him, that suddenly we doubled the number of agents on the ground so that the mainstream media would be like, ‘Hey, nothing going on here, nothing to see .’
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, on Sunday criticized President Joe Biden’s visit to the southern border, saying he didn’t have a full picture of the crisis
Immigrants sleep on the sidewalk near a migrant shelter on January 9, 2023, a day after the President’s visit. During his tour of the border installations, he met no migrants
It was Biden’s first border visit since his tenure as president.
For the past two years, Republicans have used record numbers of illegal border crossings to hammer his administration into an “open border” policy.
Biden’s supporters hoped his visit would soften the attacks.
But it emerged that law enforcement officials conducted a search of the city last week and took migrants off the streets in what critics called an attempt to give Biden a “sanitized” tour.
The number of illegal crossings has also fallen over the past two weeks, which has eased conditions in El Paso.
And Biden received a frosty reception from Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, who handed him a letter condemning his policies.
Judd said Biden didn’t meet any migrants and that the tour was nothing more than “optics.”
“He did not visit any facilities where migrants were staying,” he said. ‘So he didn’t see anything.
“He didn’t see any of the chaos he created, that he caused.”
Biden made his first visit to the southern border since becoming president. White House officials could point to another visit during his political career
Just a short distance from where President Biden took a walk along a “sanitized” section of the border fence in El Paso, migrants continued to cross the Rio Grande River into the United States
In December, this area was packed with migrants sleeping on the streets. On Bon Saturday, the same streets showed no sign of migrants camping out after an eviction
Biden flew into the border city en route to Mexico City for a summit of North American leaders.
From the airport, Biden visited the Bridge of the Americas — actually a series of bridges connecting El Paso to the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez — for an up-close look at the border and a busy port of entry.
He watched border officials demonstrate how to search vehicles for drugs, money and other contraband.
A yellow lab was shown spotting fruit and meat in a vehicle before a chocolate lab retrieved what appeared to be a packet of drugs from another car.
When he inspected the port of entry, there was a sign across the border that said “Bienvenido a Mexico.”
From there, he strolled along the border fence and on to the El Paso County Migrant Services Center to learn about the services offered to newcomers.
During his tour, Biden was shown border agents at the El Paso port of entry on the Bridge of the Americas searching vehicles for drugs, money and other contraband
Biden was shown a fake battery used in an attempt to smuggle drugs into the United States
Abbott delivered the letter to Biden at El Paso International Airport, prompting a chilly reception in Texas on Sunday as the president visited the border for the first time since taking office
He asked how many people passed through the center and was told it was around 300 to 500 a day, although sometimes it was as many as 1,000.
His drive to the center via closed roads actually put him close to people who had crossed the Rio Grande River on US soil that day. They cheered as his motorcade thundered past on the other side of the border fence from him.
But he would not have noticed their presence as his convoy sped by.
Judd said Biden claimed before the visit that he wanted to better understand the issues at the border.
“He didn’t understand what he had before he left and again, this is politics,” he said.
“It was just optics. It was a photo shoot.”