President Joe Biden will visit El Paso, Texas, on Sunday — his first time at the U.S.-Mexico border since taking office — in connection with his meeting next week in Mexico City with the leaders of Mexico and Canada.
The president announced the trip Thursday, during which he will assess border enforcement operations plus meet with local officials and community leaders about their needs.
"We're going to get these communities more support," Biden said. "I want to thank all the nonprofits, the faith groups, the community leaders and other volunteers who'll make sure that vulnerable immigrants have what they need to survive."
Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn responded, saying in a statement that the visit "can’t be a check-the-box photo-op."
"He must take the time to learn from some of the experts I rely on the most, including local officials and law enforcement, landowners, nonprofits, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s officers and agents, and folks who make their livelihoods in border communities on the front lines of his crisis," Cornyn said.
The president also announced a new immigration pathway on Thursday that would encourage migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua to apply for temporary status in the U.S. instead of coming to the border. Agents will also begin to expel people from those countries back to Mexico, in an effort to relieve record numbers of arrivals.
There have been large increases in the number of migrants at the border even as a U.S. public health law remains in place that allows American authorities to turn away many people seeking asylum in the United States. Republican leaders have criticized the president for policies that they say are ineffective on border security and they have questioned why he has not made a trip there yet.
Immigration will be among the top talking points at the summit Monday and Tuesday when Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hosts Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Early in his presidency, Biden put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the border and work with Central American nations to address central causes of the problem. She visited El Paso in June 2021 and was criticized for choosing a location too far from the epicenter of border crossings that straining federal resources.
For now, the Supreme Court has for kept in place Trump-era restrictions, often known as Title 42 in reference to a 1944 public health law, after Biden acted to end them and Republicans sued in response. Title 42 was invoked to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but there always has been criticism that the restrictions were used as a pretext by then-President Donald Trump to seal off the border.
The Biden administration has yet to lay out any systemic changes to manage an expected surge of migrants should the restrictions end. In Congress, a bipartisan immigration bill was buried shortly before Republicans assumed control of the House.
Trump visited the U.S. side of the border as president several times times, including one trip to McAllen, Texas, where he claimed Mexico would pay for the border wall.
American taxpayers ended up covering the costs. Mexican leaders had flatly rejected the idea when Trump pressed them early on. "NO,” Enrique Peña Nieto, then Mexico’s president, tweeted in May 2018. “Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”