Jan. 8 (UPI) — President Joe Biden on Sunday is to visit the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time in office as pressure grows for his administration to do something to ease tension with an increasing number of migrants making the trip there.
Biden, who was scheduled to arrive at 2:45 p.m. MST in El Paso and then 8:50 p.m. in Santa Lucia, Mexico, has received bipartisan criticism for not doing enough to slow the border chaos. Biden responded last week by announcing new measures to beef up security while allowing up to 30,000 per month to apply for asylum before traveling to the border.
Some of those measures, like embracing Trump-era Title 42 that will allow them to immediately remove migrants because of COVID-19, drew anger among some of Biden’s own supporters.
“It’s enraging and sad to see a Democratic administration make it harder for vulnerable people to seek asylum all because they’re scared of angry MAGA voters on this issue,” a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus told CNN.
In El Paso, migrant levels have hit record numbers with the anticipation of the Biden administration getting rid of Title 42 and making it easier to get into the United States.
While Republicans and conservatives have blamed Biden’s policies for the migrant surge, the White House said it has been caused by a combination of “root causes” like poverty, corruption and violence in Central America, and a broken U.S. immigration system that Congress has failed to fix.
“The actions we’re announcing today will make things better — will make things better but will not fix the border problem completely,” Biden said on Thursday. “There’s more that has to be done, and I laid that out in the first week I was here.
“That work will not be done unless and until Congress enacts and funds a more comprehensive immigration plan that I proposed on day one.”
Some governors have taken controversial measures in dealing with immigrants crossing the border. Republican governors in Texas and Florida have bussed migrants to so-called “sanctuary cities” like Chicago and New York City. More recently, Colorado, which has a Democratic governor, started to do the same but announced Saturday an end to that policy.
