President Biden traveled on Sunday to the U.S./Mexico border amid a surge in illegal border crossings. The president went to El Paso, Texas, which in December saw a surge of migration. His first stop was at the Bridge of the Americas Port of Entry, where the president toured the facility with border officials. He then stopped along the border fence that separates El Paso from Juárez, Mexico where he visited the El Paso County Migrant Services Support Center.
“They need a lot of resources. We’re going to get it for them,” Biden told reporters.
To the dismay of some Democrats and immigration advocates, his plans rely on the resumption or expansion of several Trump-era policies that Biden has previously decried, including Title 42, the pandemic-era border measure that allows migrants seeking asylum to be quickly turned away. Biden was greeted at the airport by Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the president’s policies to reporters on Air Force One Sunday, saying the goal is to “incentivize a safe and orderly way and cut out the smuggling organizations.” He said Biden was traveling to the border because “he made a decision to see what the challenges are and to see how we responded to those challenges down in El Paso.”
The administration said last week it would use Title 42 to rapidly expel asylum seekers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the countries whose migrants have posed the greatest challenge to the U.S. in the past year. It is taking the step even as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on the legality of Title 42 and the administration has argued that the measure is no longer justified on public-health grounds and must end.
The administration announced a new program for up to 30,000 migrants a month combined from the four countries to enter the U.S. legally. In the coming weeks, the administration plans to adopt an updated version of a different Trump-era policy known as the transit ban, which would make migrants at the border ineligible for asylum if they didn’t first seek protection in another country, such as Mexico, on their way to the U.S.
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