Staff Agencia Reforma
KENTUCKY, USA.- The President of the United States, Joe Biden, announced yesterday that he plans to visit the border between his country and Mexico, as part of his trip to attend the North American Leaders Summit, scheduled for next week in Mexico City.
It would be the US president’s first visit to the border since he took office in January 2021.
“That is my intention, now we are finalizing the details,” Biden said yesterday during a trip to Kentucky.
Upon his return to the White House, the Democrat said he hopes to see “what is happening” at the border and that he planned to make statements on border security today.
It was not clear, however, where on the border it will go and whether it will be before or after the summit. Biden is scheduled to arrive in Mexico City on January 9. He will be accompanied by the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
The southern border of the United States has registered a massive increase in migrants, even despite the fact that Washington kept Title 42 in force, a public health law that allows US authorities to immediately expel thousands of undocumented immigrants without allowing them to request asylum. .
Republican leaders have criticized the president for policies they say are ineffective on border security, and have questioned why he has not yet traveled to the border.
The US Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP) recorded last fiscal year, which ended on September 30, a record of 2.4 million undocumented arrests at the southern border.
Mayorkas acknowledged yesterday that the number of migrant encounters is “straining our system,” but he assured that his department is handling the situation.
“We are operating within a system that is fundamentally broken. Nobody disagrees with that. It just seems like we can’t agree on a solution, and a solution is long overdue. Within the broken immigration system that we are operating, we are managing the number of encounters and we are prepared to address the end of Title 42,” he said during a Washington Post event.
Title 42 has been the subject of several court battles. On December 27, the Supreme Court decided to maintain it, pending a substantive decision for next spring.
Human rights activists criticize the validity of the measure, which among other things allows the immediate expulsion, without legal recourse, of migrants.
Immigration will be one of the main topics at the summit on Monday and Tuesday, when Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be received by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
During his presidency, Donald Trump visited the US side of the border on several occasions, including one to McAllen, Texas, where he claimed that Mexico would pay for the border wall.
Last week, Reuters reported that the Biden administration is planning to use pandemic-era restrictions to expel many Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian migrants stuck on the southwest border back to Mexico, while allowing some to enter through airway for humanitarian reasons.
A US official told the agency that the plan has not been finalized and it is unclear if it will be announced before the meeting in Mexico.