President Biden visits El Paso border amid migrant surge

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EL PASO — President Biden on Sunday made his first journey to the southern border since his election two years in the past, looking for to blunt criticism that his immigration insurance policies have been ineffective and more and more much less humane than he promised.

This border city has develop into a logo of the crush of migrants making an attempt to enter america and a system ill-equipped to deal with them. Final month, El Paso’s mayor declared a state of emergency amid the rise in migrants, together with dozens who slept on benches in downtown streets as temperatures dipped under freezing.

Biden introduced the go to final week, including the cease to the start of a presidential journey to Mexico Metropolis for the North American Leaders’ Summit, the place hemispheric migration can be one of many high points mentioned.

On Sunday, Biden toured enforcement operations and spoke with border patrol brokers on the metropolis’s busiest crossing. He walked alongside a border fence after which met with native officers, religion leaders and assist teams at a migrant providers heart.

Requested what he’s realized through the journey, he stated: “They want numerous sources. We’re going to get it for them.”

The president traveled with a number of members of Congress and a coterie of native and federal regulation enforcement officers. Days earlier, he unveiled an immigration plan that included expanded packages to take away migrants from america shortly with out letting them search asylum. The plan did little to silence Biden’s Republican critics. It has additionally drawn fireplace from pro-immigrant teams and even Democratic allies who say it endangers migrants and erodes the humanitarian bedrock of asylum.

Immigration pivot reveals Biden going through arduous actuality of border politics

As a presidential candidate, Biden stated he would rip up the immigration measures of President Donald Trump — who rose to energy partly on anti-immigrant sentiment — and enact immigration insurance policies which can be each efficient and humane. However Republicans took management of the general public narrative as border apprehensions surged. And Biden, who has stated he'll search reelection in 2024, has sought to counter among the criticism about his immigration insurance policies and the document variety of immigration apprehensions the nation has seen below his watch.

Republicans have sought to put the immigration issues solely at Biden’s toes and have blasted him for not making a visit to the southern border through the first two years of his presidency. In latest months, Republican governors — together with these rumored to be mulling presidential runs of their very own — shipped migrants to liberal-leaning locations, together with New York Metropolis, Martha’s Winery and, on Christmas Eve, the sidewalk exterior Vice President Harris’s residence.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) informed Maria Bartiromo on Fox Information Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that Biden’s go to “is about two years too late and about $20 billion in need of what must be carried out.” He added, “He’s not going to realize my options that can make the border safer, safer and cease unlawful immigration.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) wrote in a Fox Information op-ed on Saturday that it’s taken Biden too lengthy to go to the border. “This checks a field, nevertheless it doesn’t even start to resolve the issues we face there,” she stated.

Biden, in flip, has solid among the blame on Congress, saying the one enduring resolution to the immigration disaster is a legislative one. On Thursday, as he unveiled the immigration coverage adjustments, he stated some members of Congress sought to rack up political factors on the problem — and that the legislature didn’t act on his first immigration funding request as president or his most up-to-date one.

“If probably the most excessive Republicans proceed to demagogue this situation and reject options, I’m left with just one alternative: to behave alone, do as a lot as I can alone to attempt to change the ambiance,” Biden stated Thursday.

The most recent adjustments unveiled have an effect on entrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti — nationalities whose numbers have swelled on the border in latest months. The measures, which replicate a political shift to the middle for Biden, will broaden his authority to grant authorized entry to tens of hundreds of individuals from these international locations. However migrants from these international locations who try to enter america with out authorization will threat fast expulsion to Mexico.

Biden immigration plan would limit unlawful border crossings

Below the brand new measures, as much as 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can be admitted through “parole” every month, so long as they've a U.S. monetary sponsor, officers stated.

The transfer quantities to a serious growth of a parole program that beforehand would settle for solely Venezuelans and capped the full quantity from that nation at 24,000. The adjustments general will in all probability imply fewer migrants from these 4 international locations getting into america illegally, and extra unauthorized border crossers despatched again to Mexico, which has agreed to just accept 30,000 returnees a month.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has led the authorized battle to cease the expulsions for the reason that Trump administration, criticized Biden for persevering with to depend on a pandemic-era public well being coverage referred to as Title 42, saying expelling asylum seekers will ship them into harmful border cities the place some have been kidnapped or killed.

“This knee-jerk growth of Title 42 will put extra lives in grave hazard,” Jonathan Blazer, the ACLU’s director of border methods, stated in a press release.

On Sunday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) cautioned in opposition to accepting the administration’s plans at face worth, saying on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the administration is “simply altering how the migrants get into the nation” and “you’re simply reprocessing them differently.”

“We is not going to be tricked into pondering that sure insurance policies that make it appear extra streamlined, make it appear much less chaotic, equals securing the border,” Crenshaw stated.

The White Home has pushed again in opposition to comparable criticism, saying that immigration issues can’t be positioned solely at Biden’s toes. Over the previous week, administration officers have confused that it's a multifaceted downside with many components: unrest in Latin American international locations; Congress’s lack of ability to move complete immigration reform; even a surge in migration throughout the globe.

“We've got surged sources to handle a problem that's not distinctive to the southern border of america,” Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated Sunday on ABC Information’s “This Week.” He famous that migrants from Nicaragua and Venezuela, two of the international locations for which Biden introduced a particular parole program final week, have additionally surged into Colombia and Costa Rica. “It’s gripping the hemisphere, and a regional problem requires a regional resolution.”

Upfront of Biden’s border go to, lawmakers from each side of the aisle traded barbs on immigration coverage. “There’s little question that there's a downside on the border, and President Biden acknowledges it and it’s widespread sense,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) stated on “Fox Information Sunday.” “We have to safe the border, but additionally have the humanity.”

“I hope we may get some bipartisan consensus on this,” Khanna stated of Biden’s new coverage. “We have to distinguish between people who find themselves coming right here only for financial causes and people who find themselves actually fleeing persecution.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) stated Biden and Democrats didn't do sufficient to prioritize fixing unlawful immigration after they managed the White Home and each chambers of Congress. “They simply managed all of presidency actually a few weeks in the past,” he stated on “Fox Information Sunday.” “Why on the planet didn’t they get an immigration resolution?”

From right here, Biden went on to Mexico Metropolis on Sunday night time for the long-planned summit. Biden will meet Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The following day, he’ll meet with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and that night time, the trio will collect for the formal agenda of the North American Leaders’ Summit, colloquially referred to as the Three Amigos Summit.

White Home nationwide safety spokesman John Kirby stated throughout a information briefing Friday that Biden will deal with three subjects: local weather change, migration and medicines — notably fentanyl.

Karen DeYoung, Sabrina Malhi, Azi Paybarah and Nick Miroff contributed to this report.

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