“The president caused chaos at the border, he needed to be here. It just so happens that he is two years and about $20 billion too late,” Abbott told reporters.
Abbott handed Biden a letter outlining the Republicans’ proposals for immigration policy, calling the visit a photo op. Biden, speaking to reporters later on Sunday, said he hadn’t read it yet.
The governor, for his part, has also faced accusations of using migrants as pawns, for facilitating the transfer of thousands of people from the border to northern cities.
Border Patrol officers in El Paso showed Biden the methods used to detect contraband goods, and he also saw the physical border wall that separates the city from Juárez, Mexico, according to reporters on the scene.
Biden planned to meet with local business leaders, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Sunday. When specifically asked by reporters, Jean-Pierre would not say whether Biden would speak to immigrants on the trip.
The White House unveiled a new policy last week to grant humanitarian «parole» to 30,000 immigrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, as well as crack down on those who do not follow legal routes.
“What we are trying to have is to incentivize them to come to ports of entry rather than between points of entry,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said of the migrants on Sunday, speaking to reporters en route. to El Paso. .
Mayorkas sought Sunday to draw a distinction between a new regulation proposed by the Justice Department last week and a similar Trump-era rule known as a «traffic ban.»
«It’s not a ban at all,» Mayorkas said of the proposal, which, similar to Trump-era policy, would require migrants to first be turned away from safe harbor in another country before applying for asylum in the United States.
Biden’s visit to El Paso comes amid criticism from Republicans of his administration’s immigration policies, particularly in light of the possibly imminent end of Title 42, an enforcement mechanism used by the Biden and Trump administrations to quickly expel to millions of people.
“El Paso is a place where, of course, we have seen a great challenge,” Mayorkas said. The administration has sent 100 border agents to the city and plans to open a new soft-sided migrant processing facility there on Tuesday, he said.