Washington — President Biden visited the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, his first trip there as president after two years of hounding by Republicans who’ve hammered him as delicate on border safety whereas the number of migrants crossing spirals.
In El Paso, Texas, Mr. Biden visited a migrant heart and walked along a stretch of the border wall. He was accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a number of Democratic members of Congress from the realm, the mayor of El Paso and a number of other native heads of charitable organizations.
Mr. Biden was greeted upon touchdown by Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who handed a letter to Mr. Biden that Abbott stated outlined 5 methods he can deal with the border disaster. Abbott, who has known as for Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to go to the border, advised reporters that he thought it was “this being the president’s first visit to the border, after being in office for two years, is that it is stunning and astonishing, and outrageous.”
El Paso, situated on the southwestern fringe of Texas, is at present the largest hall for unlawful crossings, due in giant half to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, crime and poverty in their nation. They are amongst migrants from 4 international locations who at the moment are topic to fast expulsion below new guidelines enacted by the Biden administration in the previous week.
The president was anticipated to meet with border officers to talk about migration in addition to the elevated trafficking of fentanyl and different artificial opioids, that are driving skyrocketing numbers of overdoses in the U.S.
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“The president’s very much looking forward to seeing for himself firsthand what the border security situation looks like,” stated John Kirby, White House nationwide safety spokesman, prior to Mr. Biden’s arrival. “This is something that he wanted to see for himself.”
Mr. Biden’s announcement on border safety and his go to to the border are aimed in half at quelling the political noise and blunting the influence 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 modifications have failed in current years.
“All of these executive branch efforts really are just temporary band-aids, whether it’s Title 8, whether it’s Title 42, if we need to make sure that Congress acts,” Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from Texas who’s becoming a member of Mr. Biden in El Paso, told “Face the Nation.”
Escobar stated she has “hit a brick wall” from Republicans and Democrats when making an attempt to implement legislative modifications to deal with border points.
“The executive branch is not the only branch of government that needs to do its job,” she stated.
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas supplied faint reward for Mr. Biden’s resolution to go to the border, and even that was notable in 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 stated.
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From Texas, Biden traveled 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. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met Biden on the airport Sunday evening and joined him in the presidential limousine for the journey to Biden’s resort.
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 the president’s go to.
“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,” stated 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 in 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, stated he has no prospects for locating a U.S. sponsor and that he is now reluctant to search asylum in the U.S. as a result of he is afraid of being despatched to Mexico.
Mexico “is a terrible country where there is crime, corruption, cartels and even the police persecute you,” he stated. “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 variety of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has risen dramatically throughout Mr. Biden’s first two years in workplace. There have been greater than 2.38 million stops through the yr 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 modifications announced this past week are Mr. Biden’s largest transfer but to include 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 thirty days from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela will get the possibility to come to the U.S. legally so long as they journey by aircraft, get a sponsor and cross background checks.
The U.S. may also flip away migrants who don’t search asylum first in a rustic they traveled by way of en route to the U.S.
The Biden administration will enable migrants in central and northern Mexico to schedule appointments to search asylum at a U.S. port of entry by way of a cellphone app, CBP One.
Escobar, the Texas congresswoman, stated many of the migrants fleeing their residence international locations have cellphones, as it’s how they impart with one another and household at residence, however she known as on different features of the U.S. authorities to take extra motion.
“We do need far more robust State Department involvement, especially for those who do not have access to that kind of technology. We need far greater education,” she stated. “Many of the refugees that I have spoken to, especially over the last couple of weeks, have no concept of what the asylum process is. Their idea is I’m going to go to the border, I’m going to get a job. And I’m going to help my family, something all of us would do, of course. So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas advised reporters aboard Air Force One that the administration is making an attempt to “incentivize a safe and orderly way and cut out the smuggling organizations,” saying the insurance policies are “not a ban at all” however an try to shield migrants from the trauma that smuggling can create.
The modifications introduced by the president have been welcomed by some, significantly leaders in cities the place migrants have been massing. But Mr. Biden was excoriated by immigrant advocate teams, which accused him of taking measures modeled after these of the previous president.
“I do take issue with comparing us to Donald Trump,” stated 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 dad and mom.
“This is not that president,” she stated.
For all of his worldwide journey over his 50 years in public service, Mr. Biden has not spent a lot time on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The solely go to that the White House might level to was his 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 trip 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 subject, traveled to the border a number of instances. During one go to, he crammed right into a small border station to examine money and medicines confiscated by brokers. During a trip to McAllen, Texas, then the middle of a rising disaster, he made certainly one 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).”