Biden expected to discuss migration, drug issues in 1st visit to U.S.-Mexico border – National | 24CA News
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 tender on border safety whereas the variety of migrants crossing spirals.
Biden is because of spend a number of hours in El Paso, Texas, presently the most important hall for unlawful 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 underneath new guidelines enacted by the Biden administration previously week that drew robust criticism from immigration advocates.
The president is anticipated to fulfill with border officers to debate migration in addition to the elevated trafficking of fentanyl and different artificial opioids, that are driving skyrocketing numbers of overdoses within the U.S.
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Biden will go to the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and meet with nonprofits and non secular teams that assist migrants arriving to the U.S. It just isn’t clear whether or not Biden will discuss to any migrants.
“The president’s very much looking forward to seeing for himself firsthand what the border security situation looks like,” mentioned John Kirby, the White House nationwide safety spokesman. “This is something that he wanted to see for himself.”
But Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, scoffed at Biden’s outreach. “All he’s going to do down there is rearrange the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. He’s not going to achieve any solutions that will make the border safer, more secure and stop illegal immigration,” he informed Fox News Channel.
Biden’s announcement on border safety and his go to to the border are aimed partly 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 modifications have failed in recent times.
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.
The problem dealing with the U.S. on its southern border “is something that is not unique to the United States. It’s gripping the hemisphere. And a regional challenge requires a regional solution,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas informed ABC’s “This Week” earlier than becoming a member of Biden on the journey.
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 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,” 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 seek out somebody to vouch for them financially.
Jose Natera, a Venezuelan migrant in El Paso who hopes to hunt asylum in Canada, mentioned he has no prospects for locating a U.S. sponsor and that he’s now reluctant to hunt 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 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.
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The coverage modifications introduced this previous week are Biden’s largest transfer but to comprise unlawful border crossings and can flip 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 prospect to come back to the U.S. legally so long as they journey by aircraft, 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 via en path to the U.S.
The modifications have been welcomed by some, notably 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 issue with comparing 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 dad and mom.
“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 go to 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 hundreds of unaccompanied minors crossed into the U.S. from Mexico.
Trump, who made hardening immigration a signature challenge, traveled to the border a number of occasions. During one go to, 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 all 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 concept.
“NO,” Enrique Pena 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).”
