“They need resources and we are going to give them”

President Joe Biden assured on Sunday in El Paso, Texas, that his government will provide the resources needed by the authorities in the border area to deal with irregular immigration, during his first trip to the US-Mexico border since he took office nearly two years ago.

The president’s visit is aimed at assessing the migration crisis in a city overwhelmed by the arrival of irregular migrants seeking to live in the US.

“They need resources and we are going to give them,” Biden told reporters after meeting with US Customs and Border Protection police officers at the Bridge of the Americas border crossing in El Paso. Border officials apprehended a record 2.2 million migrants at the border with Mexico in the 2022 fiscal year that ended in September. The figure includes people who attempted to cross multiple times.

Biden was greeted Sunday afternoon by Gov. Greg Abbott, who told reporters that he delivered a letter to the president in which he “provided five solutions that already exist under current United States law,” including the illegal detention of millions. of people in the United States. Abbott told reporters: “We are very happy that the president is here.”

Asked by reporters if he had seen Abbott’s letter, Biden pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket and said: “I haven’t read it yet.”

Biden, accompanied by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, also met this Sunday at the border with Representative Henry Cuellar.

Mayorkas said Sunday that two of the key elements that led to increased numbers of migrants arriving in the United States — international crises and legislative deadlock — were outside the president’s control.

“We’re dealing with a broken system,” Mayorkas told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Texas.

The White House said Biden would evaluate border control operations in El Paso, where the Democratic mayor declared a state of emergency last month, citing hundreds of migrants sleeping on the streets in freezing temperatures and thousands of detainees every day.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan told foxnews on Sunday that his party could help Democrats, but only if Biden embraced the enforcement policies of former President Donald Trump. Those policies included separating children from their immigrant parents as part of a “zero tolerance” approach to deter illegal immigration.

“They have now allowed a situation where, frankly, we don’t have a border anymore,” Jordan said.

Biden’s visit comes days after the announcement about new plans to block Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan immigrants at the US-Mexico border, expanding the nationalities of those who can be expelled back to Mexico, and is not expected may your visit to El Paso, Texas produce a new policy.

The new US plan includes a monthly quota of 30,000 humanitarian permits for nationals of those three countries plus Venezuela. Beneficiaries will be able to enter the US and work legally for up to two years if they apply from their home countries, pass a background check, and prove they have a financial sponsor in the US.

The White House has said that the measure seeks safe and legal emigration, and to keep migrants safe from human smugglers.

Shortly before landing in Texas, Biden wrote on his Twitter account: “Our border communities represent the best of our nation’s bounty and we will garner them more support as we expand legal avenues for orderly immigration and limit illegal immigration.”

Migrants in El Paso “waiting for a solution”

Although Biden’s visit was not expected to result in any new policies, but rather to show that he is taking the issue seriously and to strengthen relations with Border Patrol agents, some migrants seemed excited.

In the surroundings of the Sacred Heart Church, hundreds of migrants who are waiting in a “migration limbo” remain on the lookout “in case the president appears here to see how we are living on the streets waiting for a solution,” he said. to voice of americaLuis Rodriguez.

The temple has become one of the last refuges for irregular migrants and in the afternoon it was abuzz with a crowd of activists and human rights defenders offering food and help in makeshift tents.
The sisters Jaqueline and Geraldine Guerrero, aged 17 and 15, came to the Sacred Heart to send a message to President Biden.

“We don’t like to see migrants as they are, getting cold in the streets,” they assured the VOA while holding a sign that welcomes the president while asking him to help Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans.

The crisis is in the system, say activists

While Biden was visiting the border with Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez, it was any given Sunday on the streets of downtown El Paso. The inhabitants of the town shopped and went out to eat, oblivious to the commotion caused by the president’s entourage.

“It is good that he comes, that he sees how we have a crisis here, every day I see the poor migrants there sleeping outside the church and it is not human,” he told the VOA María Alejandro, while shopping in one of the streets adjacent to the Church of the Sacred Heart.

For the activist Ivonne Díaz, from the organization Undocuchucos 915, the fact that the president did not speak directly with migrants means that he will have only part of the reality. “We hoped he would meet with community leaders, that he would really see what’s going on, not just meet with the people at Fort Bliss or just the elected officials,” she insisted.

“We wanted him to really talk to migrants and to let him know that these people are human beings, that we are trying to seek a better future, that the crisis is really in the immigration system and not in the streets of El Paso,” emphasized Díaz, a “dreamer” who assures that “they have heard horrible stories from those who are arriving”.

President Biden will arrive in Mexico this Sunday, to attend a summit together with his counterparts from Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and from Canada, Justin Trudeau.

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