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President Joe Biden left his Delaware home on Sunday to fly to El Paso, Texas, where he will make his first border visit as president to see for himself the biggest crisis facing his administration.
But the White House program says he will spend just three hours on the ground to the frustration of border agents who say they have waited two years for a chance to show him the problems they face.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents 18,000 agents, said it was too little too late.
“You’re barely, wheels down to wheels up, there three hours,” he told DailyMail.com. ‘You’re barely going to get the scope of what’s going on.’
President Joe Biden flew to El Paso, Texas, on Sunday morning, making his first border visit as president to see for himself the scale of the crisis.
He flew First Lady Jill from her home in Delaware to Joint Base Andrews, where they said goodbye. She travels separately to Mexico City, when her husband attends a summit.
He said its members had waited two years for a chance to explain to the president that the increase in illegal crossings meant they were spending all their time doing paperwork instead of protecting the border from drug traffickers and criminals.
Border officials apprehended a record 2.2 million immigrants in the last full fiscal year.
And the issue has been used by Republicans to attack Biden throughout his presidency, accusing him of opening the country’s borders.
Biden released plans on Thursday to block Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan immigrants at the US-Mexico border, expanding the nationalities of immigrants who can be sent back to Mexico.
Combined with the visit to El Paso, one of the critical crossing points, supporters say it shows he is serious about tackling the problem.
Some opponents have grudgingly acknowledged the benefits of the trip.
The end of the year brought a surge in immigrant arrivals to coincide with what was expected to be the end of Title 42 and its harsh restrictions. El Paso declared an emergency
But on Saturday, the same streets had no sign of the migrants who had camped there.
The border agents union dismissed the visit to a clean El Paso in a tweet Friday
The Texas National Guard deployed along the border in El Paso late last year. They are still there and have installed two miles of additional fencing with barbed wire.
Authorities say their presence has forced migrants away from El Paso as they seek to cross into the US from Mexico, though numbers have dropped anyway, as they always do in January.
John Cornyn, one of the state’s two Republican senators, said, “You should take the time to learn from some of the experts I trust most, including local officials and law enforcement, landowners, nonprofits, US Customs and Border Protection officers and agents and people who make a living in the border communities on the front lines of this crisis.’
But Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said it was nothing more than a publicity stunt.
“Since day one of his presidency, Joe Biden has put drug smugglers and human traffickers before American families, allowing deadly fentanyl to cross the border and abandon our brave Border Patrol agents,” he said.
“Simply put: Biden’s visit is nothing more than a photo op.”
The visit sparked controversy even before it began when news broke last week that city authorities had begun clearing migrant camps.
The areas once teeming with illegal arrivals around the Greyhound bus station were eerily quiet on Saturday, the day before Biden’s visit.
“I think they are trying to send a message that they are going to more consistently verify the documented status of people, and if they have not been processed, they are going to pick it up,” said Rubén García, of the Casa de la Anunciación aid group. . Associated Press.
Biden will visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and meet with non-profit organizations and faith-based groups that support migrants arriving in the US.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said: “The President is very eager to see for himself what the border security situation is like.
“This is something he wanted to see for himself.”
On Thursday, Biden announced he was expanding Trump-era restrictions to quickly remove Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan immigrants caught crossing the southern border illegally.
Instead, the US will accept 30,000 people a month from those three countries, as well as Venezuela, as long as they arrive legally.
This is what Biden would have seen in mid-December when crowds crossed the Rio Grande that separates the two countries and turned themselves in to border patrols.
It represents an attempt both to avoid Republican criticism that he has allowed record numbers to cross the US-Mexico border, and to address concerns within the Democratic Party that Biden has been too slow to get rid of Trump-era restrictions. that preclude the need to apply for asylum.
The administration is preparing for the end of Title 42, a public health regulation that allows for the removal of migrants before they can apply for asylum to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
However, the proposals immediately drew ire from both sides, with Republicans saying it was too little, too late and some Democrats saying it expanded restrictions imposed by President Donald Trump.
Even in announcing the plan, Biden acknowledged that it was far from perfect.
“The actions that we’re announcing today will make things better… they’ll make things better but they won’t completely fix the border problem,” he said.