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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is heading to the U.S.-Mexico border connected Sunday, his archetypal travel determination arsenic president aft 2 years of hounding by Republicans who person hammered him arsenic soft connected borderline security portion the fig of migrants crossing spirals.
Biden is owed to walk a fewer hours successful El Paso, Texas, presently the biggest corridor for amerciable crossings, owed successful ample portion to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, transgression and poorness successful their country. They are among migrants from 4 countries who are present taxable to speedy expulsion nether new rules enacted by the Biden administration successful the past week that drew beardown disapproval from migration advocates.
The president is expected to conscionable with borderline officials to sermon migration arsenic good arsenic the accrued trafficking of fentanyl and different synthetic opioids, which are driving skyrocketing numbers of overdoses successful the U.S.
Biden volition sojourn the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and conscionable with nonprofits and spiritual groups that enactment migrants arriving to the U.S. It is not wide whether Biden volition speech to immoderate migrants.
“The president’s precise overmuch looking guardant to seeing for himself firsthand what the borderline information concern looks like,” said John Kirby, White House nationalist information spokesman. “This is thing that helium wanted to spot for himself.”
Biden’s announcement connected borderline information and his sojourn to the borderline are aimed successful portion astatine quelling the governmental sound and blunting the interaction of upcoming investigations into migration promised by House Republicans. But immoderate enduring solution volition necessitate enactment by the sharply divided Congress, wherever aggregate efforts to enact sweeping changes person failed successful caller years.
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas offered faint praise for Biden’s determination to sojourn the border, and adjacent that was notable successful the existent governmental climate.
“He indispensable instrumentality the clip to larn from immoderate of the experts I trust connected the most, including section officials and instrumentality enforcement, landowners, nonprofits, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s officers and agents, and folks who marque their livelihoods successful borderline communities connected the beforehand lines of his crisis,” Cornyn said.
From El Paso, Biden volition proceed southbound to Mexico City, wherever he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada volition gather connected Monday and Tuesday for a North American leaders summit. Immigration is among the items connected the agenda.
The situation facing the U.S. connected its confederate borderline “is thing that is not unsocial to the United States. It’s gripping the hemisphere. And a determination situation requires a determination solution,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC’s “This Week” earlier joining Biden connected the trip.
In El Paso, wherever migrants congregate astatine autobus stops and successful parks earlier traveling on, borderline patrol agents person stepped up information earlier Biden’s visit.
“I deliberation they’re trying to nonstop a connection that they’re going to much consistently cheque people’s documented status, and if you person not been processed they are going to prime you up,” said Ruben Garcia of the Annunciation House assistance radical successful El Paso.
Migrants and asylum-seekers fleeing unit and persecution person progressively recovered that protections successful the United States are disposable chiefly to those with wealth oregon the savvy to find idiosyncratic to vouch for them financially.
Jose Natera, a Venezuelan migrant successful El Paso who hopes to question asylum successful Canada, said helium has nary prospects for uncovering a U.S. sponsor and that he’s present reluctant to question asylum successful the U.S. due to the fact that he’s acrophobic of being sent to Mexico.
Mexico “is a unspeakable state wherever determination is crime, corruption, cartels and adjacent the constabulary persecute you,” helium said. “They accidental that radical who deliberation astir entering illegally won’t person a chance, but astatine the aforesaid clip I don’t person a sponsor. … I came to this state to work. I didn’t travel present to play.”
The numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico borderline has risen dramatically during Biden’s archetypal 2 years successful office. There were much than 2.38 cardinal stops during the twelvemonth that ended Sept. 30, the archetypal clip the fig topped 2 million. The medication has struggled to clamp down connected crossings, reluctant to instrumentality hard-line measures that would lucifer those of the Trump administration.
The argumentation changes announced this past week are Biden’s biggest determination yet to incorporate amerciable borderline crossings and volition crook distant tens of thousands of migrants arriving astatine the border. At the aforesaid time, 30,000 migrants per period from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela volition get the accidental to travel to the U.S. legally arsenic agelong arsenic they question by plane, get a sponsor and walk inheritance checks.
The U.S. volition besides crook distant migrants who bash not question asylum archetypal successful a state they traveled done en way to the U.S.
The changes were welcomed by some, peculiarly leaders successful cities wherever migrants person been massing. But Biden was excoriated by migrant advocator groups, which accused him of taking measures modeled aft those of the erstwhile president.
“I bash instrumentality contented with comparing america to Donald Trump,” said White House property caput Karine Jean-Pierre, pointing to immoderate of his astir maligned policies, including the separation of migrant children from their parents.
“This is not that president,” she said.
For each of his planetary question implicit his 50 years successful nationalist service, Biden has not spent overmuch clip astatine the U.S.-Mexico border.
The lone sojourn that the White House could constituent to was Biden’s thrust by the borderline portion helium was campaigning for president successful 2008. He sent Vice President Kamala Harris to El Paso successful 2021, but she was criticized for mostly bypassing the action, due to the fact that El Paso wasn’t the halfway of crossings that it is now.
President Barack Obama made a 2011 travel to El Paso, wherever helium toured borderline operations and the Paso Del Norte planetary bridge, but helium was aboriginal criticized for not going backmost arsenic tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed into the U.S. from Mexico.
Trump, who made hardening migration a signature issue, traveled to the borderline respective times. During 1 visit, helium crammed into a tiny borderline presumption to inspect currency and drugs confiscated by agents. During a travel to McAllen, Texas, past the halfway of a increasing crisis, helium made 1 of his most-often repeated claims, that Mexico would wage to physique a borderline wall.
American taxpayers ended up footing the measure aft Mexican leaders flatly rejected the idea.
“NO,” Enrique Peña Nieto, past Mexico’s president, tweeted successful May 2018. “Mexico volition NEVER wage for a wall. Not now, not ever. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”
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Associated Press writer Morgan Lee successful Santa Fe, New Mexico, contributed to this report.
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