WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden headed to the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, his first trip there as president after two years of besieging Republicans who undermined him as border security as migrant numbers spiraled.
Biden will spend several hours in El Paso, Texas, currently the largest corridor for illegal crossings, as most Nicaraguans are fleeing oppression, crime and poverty in their country. They are among migrants from four countries now subject to expedited deportation under new rules the Biden administration put in place last week.
The president is expected to meet with border officials to discuss migration as well as the growing trade in fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which are driving the number of overdoses in the US.
Biden will visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and meet with nonprofit organizations and religious groups that support migrants arriving in the U.S. It is unclear whether Biden will talk to migrants.
“The president is very much looking forward to seeing firsthand what the border security situation looks like,” said John Kirby, the White House national security spokesman. “That’s what you want to see for yourself.”
Biden’s announcement on border security and his visit to the border were aimed at eliminating political distractions and lessening the impact of future investigations into immigration promised by House Republicans. But any solution will require action by a deeply divided Congress, where multiple attempts to enact sweeping changes have failed in recent years.
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas offered praise for Biden’s decision to visit the border, and even that is popular in the current political climate.
“They should take the time to learn from some of the most trusted experts, including local and law enforcement officials, landowners, nonprofit organizations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials and agents, and people who make a living in border communities in the area. the front line of their crisis,” Cornyn said.
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From El Paso, Biden will continue south to Mexico City, where he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada will gather on Monday and Tuesday for a summit of North American leaders. Immigration is on the agenda.
In El Paso, where migrants gather at bus stops and in parks before their journeys, border patrol agents have stepped up security ahead of Biden’s visit.
“I think they’re trying to send a message that they’re going to check your documented status more consistently, and if you haven’t been processed, they’re going to take you,” said Ruben Garcia of the Annunciation House aid group in El Paso.
Migrants and asylum seekers fleeing violence and persecution are increasingly finding refuge in the United States available primarily to those with money or the savvy to find someone who can provide financial security.
Jose Natera, a Venezuelan migrant in El Paso who hopes to seek asylum in Canada, said he has no prospects of finding a U.S. sponsor and that he is now refusing to seek asylum in the U.S. because he fears being sent to Mexico.
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Mexico “is a horrible country where there is crime, corruption, cartels and even the police will persecute you,” he said. “They say that people who think about entering illegally will not 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 number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border rose dramatically during Biden’s first two years in office. There were more than 2.38 million stops during the year that ended September 30, the first time the number topped 2 million. The administration has struggled to make ends meet, reluctant to take drastic measures similar to those of the Trump administration.
The policy change announced last week is Biden’s biggest step yet to contain illegal border crossings and will turn away tens of thousands of migrants arriving at the border. At the same time, 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela will have the opportunity to come to the US legally as long as they travel by plane, obtain sponsorship and pass a background check.
The U.S. will also turn away migrants who do not first seek asylum in the country they are transiting through to the U.S
The change has been welcomed by some, especially leaders in cities that already have large numbers of migrants. But Biden has been criticized by immigrant advocacy groups, which accuse him of taking steps modeled after former presidents.
“I have a problem comparing us to Donald Trump,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pointing to some of his most criticized policies, including the separation of migrant children from their parents.
“This is not the president,” he said.
For all his international travel during his 50 years in public service, Biden hasn’t spent much time at the US-Mexico border.
The only visit the White House could make was Biden’s drive along the border when he was campaigning for president in 2008. He sent Vice President Kamala Harris to El Paso in 2021, but he was criticized for largely skipping the action, because El Paso not the intersection center that it is now.
President Barack Obama made a 2011 trip to El Paso, where he visited border operations and the Paso Del Norte international bridge, but he was later criticized for not returning because tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed into the US from Mexico.
Trump, who has made hardening immigration a signature issue, has traveled to the border several times. During one visit, he went into a small border station to check for money and drugs that agents had seized. During a trip to McAllen, Texas, then the epicenter of much of the crisis, he made one of his most oft-repeated claims, that Mexico would pay to build a border wall.
American taxpayers footed the bill after Mexican leaders rejected the idea.
“NO,” Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president, tweeted in May 2018. “Mexico will not pay for the wall. Not now, never. Greetings, Mexico (all of us).