President Joe Biden inspected a busy port of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, his first trip to the region after two years in office as Republicans hammer him for being soft on border security while the variety of migrants crossing spirals.
Biden watched as border officers in El Paso demonstrated how they search vehicles for drugs, money and other contraband. In an indication of the deep political tensions over the immigration, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott handed Biden a letter upon his arrival that said the “chaos” on the border was the “direct result” of the president’s failure to implement federal laws.
Biden planned to spend a couple of hours in town, currently the biggest corridor for illegal crossings, largely to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, crime and poverty of their country. They’re amongst migrants from 4 countries who are actually subject to quick expulsion under latest rules enacted by the Biden administration previously week that drew strong criticism from immigration advocates.
The president met with border officials to debate migration in addition to the increased trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, that are driving skyrocketing numbers of overdoses within the U.S.
Biden was scheduled to go to the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and meet with nonprofits and non secular groups that support migrants arriving to the U.S. It was not clear whether Biden would discuss with any migrants.
Biden’s announcement on border security and his visit to the border are aimed partly at quelling the political noise and blunting the impact of upcoming investigations into immigration promised by House Republicans. But any enduring solution would require motion by the sharply divided Congress, where multiple efforts to enact sweeping changes have failed in recent times.
From El Paso, Biden was to proceed south to Mexico City, where he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada will gather on Monday and Tuesday for a North American leaders summit. Immigration is among the many items on the agenda. The challenge facing the U.S. on its southern border requires cooperation amongst multiple countries, an indication that diplomacy will matter as much as internal U.S. policies.
In El Paso, where migrants congregate at bus stops and in parks before traveling on, border patrol agents have stepped up security before Biden’s visit.
“I feel they’re attempting to send a message that they will more consistently check people’s documented status, and if you’ve got not been processed they will pick you up,” said Ruben Garcia of the Annunciation House aid group in El Paso.
Migrants and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and persecution have increasingly found that protections in america can be found primarily to those with money or the savvy to search out someone to vouch for them financially.
Jose Natera, a Venezuelan migrant in El Paso who hopes to hunt asylum in Canada, said he has no prospects for locating a U.S. sponsor and that he’s now reluctant to hunt asylum within the U.S. because he’s afraid of being sent to Mexico.
Mexico “is a terrible country where there’s crime, corruption, cartels and even the police persecute you,” he said. “They are saying that folks who take into consideration entering illegally won’t have a probability, but at the identical time I do not have a sponsor. … I got here 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 during Biden’s first two years in office. There have been greater than 2.38 million stops throughout the yr that ended Sept. 30, the primary time the number topped 2 million. The administration has struggled to clamp down on crossings, reluctant to take hard-line measures that will resemble those of the Trump administration.
The policy changes announced this past week are Biden’s biggest move yet to contain illegal border crossings and can turn away tens of hundreds 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 return to the U.S. legally so long as they travel by plane, get a sponsor and pass background checks.
The U.S. may even turn away migrants who don’t seek asylum first in a rustic they traveled through en path to the U.S. Migrants are being asked to finish a form on a phone app in order that they they’ll go to a port of entry at a pre-scheduled date and time.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters aboard Air Force One which the administration is attempting to “incentivize a secure and orderly way and cut out the smuggling organizations,” saying the policies are “not a ban in any respect” but an try and protect migrants from the trauma that smuggling can create.
The changes were welcomed by some, particularly leaders in cities where migrants have been massing. But Biden was excoriated by immigrant advocate groups, which accused him of taking measures modeled after those of the previous president. Administration officials disputed that characterization.
For all of his international travel over his 50 years in public service, Biden has not spent much time on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The one visit that the White House could point to was Biden’s drive by the border while he was campaigning for president in 2008. He sent Vice President Kamala Harris to El Paso in 2021, but she was criticized for largely bypassing the motion, because El Paso wasn’t the middle of crossings that it’s now.
President Barack Obama made a 2011 trip to El Paso, where he toured border operations and the Paso Del Norte international bridge, but he was later criticized for not going back as tens of hundreds of unaccompanied minors crossed into the U.S. from Mexico.
Trump, who made hardening immigration a signature issue, traveled to the border several times. During one visit, he crammed right into a small border station to examine money and medicines confiscated by agents. During a visit to McAllen, Texas, then the middle of a growing crisis, he made considered one of his most-often repeated claims, that Mexico would pay to construct a border wall.
American taxpayers ended up footing the bill after Mexican leaders flatly rejected the thought.
