Border Patrol union chief says Biden’s visit to El Paso port of entry was a waste of time

The head of the Border Patrol agents union condemned President Joe Biden’s visit to El Paso, saying he wasted time visiting the city’s port of entry, where tens of thousands of people enter legally from Mexico each day.

Biden spent more than three hours in the Texas city watching agents search cars and luggage for contraband, and also learning about services available to migrants.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the border crisis was not being felt at official ports of entry.

“He didn’t speak to any base agents,” Judd said.

He spent most of his time at the port of entry. We have no problems at the port of entry. That’s not where the problems are.

Immigrants sleep on the sidewalk near a migrant shelter on January 9, 2023, one day after the president’s visit. He did not meet any migrants during his tour of border facilities

Judd said the president would have learned little about the problems Border Patrol faces by visiting a port of entry, where tightly controlled lines of people wait with their IDs or passports.

Biden stopped in the Texas border city before heading to Mexico City for a summit of North American leaders.

It was his first visit to the southern border since he took office. For two years, the Republican kept up a constant chorus of demands that he see for himself the strain caused by more than two million people trying to cross each year.

But if the president thought his tour would silence critics, he quickly set him straight.

Judd said his members thought it was too little, too late and were angry that Biden had not heard from the rank-and-file agents who were responsible for patrolling the border between points of entry.

“The only people he met with at Border Patrol were the higher ups,” he said.

‘If they don’t tell you what you want to hear, they are subject to being transferred.

“He did not meet with any frontline agents.”

Immigrants cross the Rio Grande River into El Paso, Texas on January 8, 2023 from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the same day as Biden’s visit

Biden was making his first visit to the southern border since taking office. White House officials have been able to pinpoint another visit during his political career.

It also emerged that law enforcement officers conducted a sweep of the city last week, clearing migrants off the street, in what opponents said was an effort to give Biden a “sanitized” tour.

The number of illegal crossings has also plummeted in the past two weeks, improving conditions in El Paso.

“Every Border Patrol agent I’ve spoken to is extremely frustrated and upset about what happened yesterday,” Judd said.

“They are upset that he was not willing to see what was really going on. They are upset because they cleaned everything up.

“They’re upset because he knew he was going to bring the mainstream media with him, that we suddenly doubled the number of officers in the field so that the mainstream media was like, ‘Hey, there’s nothing going on here. Nothing to do with it.’

Judd said that Biden did not meet any migrants and that the tour was nothing more than “optics.”

“He did not visit any facilities where the migrants would have been,” he said. So she didn’t see anything.

“He didn’t see any of the chaos he’s created, that he’s caused.”

A short distance from where President Biden was strolling along a ‘sanitized’ stretch of border fence in El Paso, the migrants continued across the Rio Grande into the US.

In December, this area was filled with migrants sleeping on the streets. Bon Saturday, the same streets had no sign of the migrants who had camped there after a cleanup operation

Biden arrived in El Paso in the early afternoon.

From the airport, Biden visited the Bridge of the Americas, actually a series of bridges connecting El Paso to the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, for a closer look at the border and a bustling port of entry.

He watched border agents demonstrate how they search vehicles for drugs, money and other contraband.

A yellow lab was shown sniffing fruit and meat in a vehicle, before a chocolate lab retrieved what appeared to be a package of drugs from another car.

As he made his way through the port of entry, a sign reading ‘Welcome to Mexico’ could be seen on the other side of the border.

From there, he took a walk along the side of the border fence and continued on to the El Paso County Migrant Services Center to learn about services offered to new arrivals.

During his tour, Biden was shown how border agents search vehicles for drugs, money and other contraband at the El Paso port of entry at the Bridge of the Americas.

Biden was shown a fake battery that was used in an attempted drug smuggling into the US.

Abbott delivered this letter to Biden at El Paso International Airport, ensuring a frosty welcome to Texas on Sunday as the president makes his first border visit since taking office.

He asked how many people passed through the center and was told between 300 and 500 a day, although sometimes it reached 1,000.

His trip to the center, through closed roads, actually brought him closer to people who had crossed the Rio Grande that day onto US soil. They cheered as their caravan thundered past the border fence.

But he wouldn’t have been aware of his presence when his convoy ran past.

Judd said that Biden said before the visit that he wanted to better understand the problems at the border.

“He didn’t understand more than what he had before he left, and again, that’s politics,” he said.

It was just optics. It was a photo session.