Joe Biden tours El Paso for first border visit of his presidency

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EL PASO — President Joe Biden toured El Paso for about 4 hours on Sunday, visiting the U.S.-Mexico border for the primary time since taking workplace within the White Home.

He was greeted by Gov. Greg Abbott upon arrival on the El Paso airport. Abbott has been a chief critic of Biden’s immigration insurance policies and has ceaselessly referred to as on him to go to the border over the previous 12 months because the variety of migrant arrests has damaged data.

“The president who prompted the chaos on the border wanted to be right here. It simply so occurs he’s two years and about $20 billion too late,” Abbott advised reporters on the airport. “He must step up and take swift motion, together with reimbursing the state of Texas towards the cash we spent however offering extra sources for federal authorities to do its job. Additionally that is nothing however for present except he begins to implement the immigration legal guidelines that exist already.”

The 2 spoke briefly on the airport and parted methods. Abbott’s workplace mentioned he was not invited to attend the remainder of the president’s tour of El Paso. Requested about his dialog with Biden, Abbott advised reporters, “He mentioned he wished to work with us on it.”

Biden’s workplace mentioned the purpose of the journey was to “assess border enforcement operations and meet with native elected officers and group leaders who’ve been essential companions in managing the historic variety of migrants fleeing political oppression and gang violence.”

Whereas in El Paso, Biden visited the Bridge of the Americas port of entry — which connects El Paso to Ciudad Juárez for vacationers and business commerce. The president can even go to the El Paso County Migrant Providers Heart. Biden will probably be joined by Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; Democratic U.S. Reps. Veronica Escobar of El Paso, Henry Cuellar of Laredo, and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen; El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser; and El Paso County Choose Ricardo Samaniego.

Biden made an unscheduled cease close to an 18-foot-tall border fence alongside the border with Mexico, in accordance with a pool report.

When requested by reporters what he realized throughout his journey to El Paso, he mentioned, “They want a variety of sources. We’re going to get it for them.”

After his transient go to, he left for Mexico Metropolis. Biden is scheduled to satisfy with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the course of the North American Leaders’ Summit on Monday and Tuesday.

The go to to the border for the president is politically fraught — as Republicans have accused Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of neglecting border safety.

As Biden visited the border metropolis, Republican Nationwide Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel held a press convention within the Rio Grande Valley with group leaders to criticize the president’s “disastrous border safety plan and its results on Texas’ border communities.”

“We’re in McAllen, Texas, within the Rio Grande Valley, the place a lot of that is taking place, and President Biden has nonetheless by no means been right here,” mentioned McDaniel, standing alongside native officers. “So we wished to guarantee that we don’t neglect this a part of the state and permit him to do a photograph op in El Paso and faux that the issue is gone.”

Abbott, who has made border safety a high precedence of his administration and who initiated the constructing of a state-funded border wall, mentioned on Fox Information that the Biden administration didn’t attain out concerning the El Paso go to till Saturday evening, when a staffer obtained an e mail inviting Abbott to greet Biden on the tarmac.

Abbott mentioned he hand-delivered a letter to the president on the tarmac. The letter pinned the inflow of migrants on the Biden administration’s open-border insurance policies and demanded the president take a stricter method in securing the border.

Biden mentioned he hasn’t learn it but, in accordance with a pool report.

Biden just lately introduced a set of latest insurance policies that will permit 30,000 migrants per thirty days from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the nation and be capable of work legally for as much as two years, so long as they apply from their dwelling nation and may discover somebody to assist them economically within the U.S.

On the identical time, immigration brokers would broaden using the emergency well being order often called Title 42 to expel the identical variety of migrants from these 4 nations to Mexico in the event that they try and enter the U.S. illegally. In keeping with the Division of Homeland Safety, Mexico has agreed to just accept as much as 30,000 migrants a month from these nations beneath Title 42.

If greater than that quantity are apprehended, immigration officers would course of further migrants beneath normal immigration legal guidelines, which may end in deportation and a five-year ban from having the ability to enter the nation legally.

“What we’re attempting to do is broadly incentivize, secure and orderly manner, and reduce out the smuggling organizations,” Mayorkas mentioned in the course of the flight to El Paso, in accordance with a pool report. “So what what we’re attempting to have is to incentivize them to return to the ports of entry as a substitute of in between the factors of entry.”

He additionally mentioned the Biden administration has despatched an extra 100 Border Patrol brokers to the El Paso space, and later this week officers will open “a brand new soft-sided facility that can be capable of course of as much as 1,000 migrants,” in accordance with the pool report.

As a part of the brand new insurance policies, the Biden administration additionally plans to suggest an immigration rule that will deny asylum to anybody who immigrated to different nations and didn’t search asylum there first. This rule will undergo a public-comment section earlier than it’s carried out and may take impact.

Some immigrant rights advocates welcomed the brand new program permitting 30,000 migrants a month to enter legally. However additionally they blasted the president for increasing Title 42 and proposing a journey ban on migrants experiencing violence. Some say it’s just like a plan the Trump administration tried to implement.

The Biden administration tried to elevate Title 42 final 12 months earlier than a federal decide in Louisiana ordered the administration to proceed implementing the emergency well being order. In November, Choose Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court docket in Washington, D.C., ordered the Biden administration to instantly elevate Title 42, then later agreed to offer the federal authorities till Dec. 21 to organize for the change.

On Dec. 27, the U.S. Supreme Court docket dominated the Biden administration should proceed implementing Title 42. The excessive court docket agreed to listen to arguments in February on whether or not an Arizona-led coalition of 19 states, together with Texas, can problem a lower-court ruling that ordered the Biden administration to elevate Title 42.

Dylan Corbett, the manager director of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, mentioned he would “wish to see this administration make the ethical argument to the remainder of the nation that we have to put in place an efficient, humane, accessible, welcoming and compassionate system of safety on the border.”

“On the finish of the day, the enlargement of Title 42 to incorporate Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans is a damaged promise,” Corbett mentioned. “Quite than placing our nation on a certain path to completely restoring asylum on the border, these new actions entrench a harmful, ineffective and inhumane coverage.”

Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee safety at Human Rights First, mentioned, “We urge the administration to regulate course, finish its enlargement of Title 42 and abandon its misguided plan to advance an asylum ban.”

”Whereas we welcome the creation of latest, secure pathways, we strongly condemn the Biden administration’s determination to broaden use of Title 42 to further nationalities and its potential resurrection of a brand new asylum ban that will flip away folks in search of refugee safety,” she mentioned.

Mayorkas responded to the criticism.

“I’ve seen the criticism of it as a ban, however it isn’t a ban in any respect,” Mayorkas mentioned, in accordance with the pool report. “It’s markedly completely different than what the Trump administration proposed.”

He added, “I’ve seen firsthand what trauma is inflicted on migrants who truly use the smuggling organizations, so trauma or tragedy.”

Final month, El Paso was the epicenter of a giant enhance of migrants crossing the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juárez. Border Patrol officers launched some migrants into El Paso’s downtown after processing them, and a whole lot slept outside in practically freezing temperatures as a result of native shelters had reached their limits. In fiscal 12 months 2022, which led to September, immigration brokers encountered 2.4 million migrants on the southern border — a record-breaking quantity.

In keeping with Mayorkas, in December there was a each day common of about 2,000 migrants crossing the Rio Grande into the El Paso space, in accordance with the pool report. That has gone right down to about 700 a day, Mayorkas mentioned.

In the meantime in El Paso’s Segundo Barrio, a neighborhood south of downtown, a whole lot of migrants have slept on the street the place Sacred Coronary heart Church has been housing some migrants at evening. Not everybody matches within the church’s shelter, so many have slept on the sidewalks subsequent to it.

The state of affairs in current weeks has been tense.

El Paso police just lately arrested 27-year-old Steven Mathew Driscoll on suspicion of harassing and pointing a gun at a few of the migrants on New 12 months’s Eve. Additionally, up to now week, El Paso police and Border Patrol brokers have been arresting migrants close to the church. Police say they’re arresting migrants who’re violating metropolis ordinances, and Border Patrol brokers say they’ve been arresting migrants who crossed the border with out being processed.

Some migrants mentioned they have the funds for to get on a bus out of city to reunite with household in different components of the nation however are afraid to step away from the church’s premises as a result of they’re afraid they will be arrested by police or immigration brokers.

On a current Friday afternoon, Pastor Rafael Garcia was standing on the nook of a sidewalk wanting involved as El Paso police arrested a migrant. An officer on the scene advised Garcia police have been arresting the migrant on suspicion of violating a metropolis ordinance.

Garcia mentioned he hoped Biden acknowledges that “these individuals are fleeing violence and are in a determined state of affairs.”

“So what different have they got?” he mentioned.

Jorge Luis Lugo, a 26-year-old Venezuelan migrant, washed his face in a transportable sink and mentioned he wished Biden would go to the church to see the circumstances migrants reside in. He mentioned that he wished Biden’s newest immigration plan would have included migrants who’ve already arrived.

“After sacrificing loads, how does he anticipate us to only return?” he mentioned. “We simply need an opportunity to have the ability to work and assist our households again dwelling.”

Carolina Rodriguez, 36, mentioned she and her husband have been sleeping on a sidewalk subsequent to the church since Christmas Day. They left their 12- and 9-year-old daughters again dwelling along with her mom as a result of they solely need to be within the U.S. to work. She mentioned a cousin in Florida is attempting to collect up sufficient cash to purchase them aircraft or bus tickets out of El Paso. Within the meantime, she mentioned she would keep in El Paso to work however thus far has been denied a job as a barber.

“Not all of us are dangerous,” she mentioned, sitting an altar for the Virgin of Guadalupe whereas her husband lay down close to her. “There’s a variety of us who’ve expertise, professions and easily simply need to work to get forward in life.”

In Venezeula, she was a kindergarten trainer, however after the nation’s economic system collapsed, it wasn’t sufficient cash to maintain her household. She labored numerous jobs similar to chopping hair or making truffles, however then she started getting loss of life threats over the cellphone. She mentioned she has relations who labored for the native authorities, and the nameless threats got here from folks saying they’d kidnap her or her kids except she gave them cash in return for her security.

She mentioned she reported it to police, however life in Venezuela was insufferable.

“I’m an enormous believer in God, so if He needs me right here on the streets, so be it,” she mentioned. “Quickly my household will be capable of get me cash to get out right here.”