“This is something that he wanted to see for himself,” a White House spokesman mentioned of Biden’s visit to El Paso.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is heading to the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, his first journey there as president after two years of hounding by Republicans who’ve hammered him as comfortable on border safety whereas the number of migrants crossing spirals.
Biden is due to spend a number of hours in El Paso, Texas, at present the biggest corridor for illegal crossings, due largely to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, crime and poverty of their nation. They are amongst migrants from 4 international locations who at the moment are topic to fast expulsion beneath new rules enacted by the Biden administration previously week.
The president is anticipated to meet with border officers to focus on migration in addition to the elevated trafficking of fentanyl and different artificial opioids, that are driving skyrocketing numbers of overdoses within the U.S.
Biden will visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and meet with nonprofits and spiritual teams that assist migrants arriving to the U.S. It shouldn’t be clear whether or not Biden will speak to any migrants.
“The president’s very much looking forward to seeing for himself firsthand what the border security situation looks like,” said John Kirby, White House national security spokesman. “This is something that he wanted to see for himself.”
Biden’s announcement on border safety and his visit to the border are aimed partially at quelling the political noise and blunting the affect of upcoming investigations into immigration promised by House Republicans. But any enduring resolution would require motion by the sharply divided Congress, the place a number of efforts to enact sweeping adjustments have failed lately.
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas provided faint reward for Biden’s resolution to visit the border, and even that was notable within the present political local weather.
“He must take the time to learn from some of the experts I rely on the most, including local officials and law enforcement, landowners, nonprofits, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s officers and agents, and folks who make their livelihoods in border communities on the front lines of his crisis,” Cornyn mentioned.
From El Paso, Biden will proceed south to Mexico City, the place he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada will collect on Monday and Tuesday for a North American leaders summit. Immigration is among the many gadgets on the agenda.
In El Paso, the place migrants congregate at bus stops and in parks earlier than touring on, border patrol brokers have stepped up safety earlier than Biden’s visit.
“I think they’re trying to send a message that they’re going to more consistently check people’s documented status, and if you have not been processed they are going to pick you up,” mentioned Ruben Garcia of the Annunciation House assist group in El Paso.
Migrants and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and persecution have more and more discovered that protections within the United States can be found primarily to these with cash or the savvy to discover somebody to vouch for them financially.
Jose Natera, a Venezuelan migrant in El Paso who hopes to search asylum in Canada, mentioned he has no prospects for discovering a U.S. sponsor and that he’s now reluctant to search asylum within the U.S. as a result of he’s afraid of being despatched to Mexico.
Mexico “is a terrible country where there is crime, corruption, cartels and even the police persecute you,” he mentioned. “They say that people who think about entering illegally won’t have a chance, but at the same time I don’t have a sponsor. … I came to this country to work. I didn’t come here to play.”
The numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has risen dramatically throughout Biden’s first two years in workplace. There had been greater than 2.38 million stops through the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, the primary time the quantity topped 2 million. The administration has struggled to clamp down on crossings, reluctant to take hard-line measures that will resemble these of the Trump administration.
The coverage adjustments introduced this previous week are Biden’s greatest transfer but to comprise unlawful border crossings and can flip away tens of 1000’s of migrants arriving on the border. At the identical time, 30,000 migrants per 30 days from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela will get the possibility to come to the U.S. legally so long as they journey by airplane, get a sponsor and cross background checks.
The U.S. will even flip away migrants who don’t search asylum first in a rustic they traveled by en route to the U.S.
The adjustments had been welcomed by some, significantly leaders in cities the place migrants have been massing. But Biden was excoriated by immigrant advocate teams, which accused him of taking measures modeled after these of the previous president.
“I do take difficulty with evaluating us to Donald Trump,” mentioned White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pointing to a few of his most maligned insurance policies, together with the separation of migrant kids from their mother and father.
“This is not that president,” she mentioned.
For all of his worldwide journey over his 50 years in public service, Biden has not spent a lot time on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The solely visit that the White House might level to was Biden’s drive by the border whereas he was campaigning for president in 2008. He despatched Vice President Kamala Harris to El Paso in 2021, however she was criticized for largely bypassing the motion, as a result of El Paso wasn’t the middle of crossings that it’s now.
President Barack Obama made a 2011 journey to El Paso, the place he toured border operations and the Paso Del Norte worldwide bridge, however he was later criticized for not going again as tens of 1000’s of unaccompanied minors crossed into the U.S. from Mexico.
Trump, who made hardening immigration a signature difficulty, traveled to the border a number of instances. During one visit, he crammed right into a small border station to examine money and medicines confiscated by brokers. During a visit to McAllen, Texas, then the middle of a rising disaster, he made one in every of his most-often repeated claims, that Mexico would pay to construct a border wall.
American taxpayers ended up footing the invoice after Mexican leaders flatly rejected the thought.
“NO,” Enrique Peña Nieto, then Mexico’s president, tweeted in May 2018. “Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”
Associated Press author Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, contributed to this report.
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