Joe Biden flies to border but will spend just THREE HOURS there trends now
President Joe Biden left his Delaware home on Sunday to fly to El Paso, Texas, where he will be making his first visit to the border as president to see for himself the biggest crisis facing his administration.
But the White House schedule says he will spend just three hours on the ground much to the frustration of border agents who say they have waited two years for a chance to show him the problems they face.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents 18,000 agents, said it was too little, too late.
'You're barely — from wheels down to wheels up — there three hours,' he told DailyMail.com. 'You're barely going to get the scope of what is happening.'
President Joe Biden left his Delaware home on Sunday to fly to El Paso, Texas, where he will be making his first visit to the border as president to see for himself the scale of the crisis
The end of the year brought a surge in migrant arrivals to coincide with what was expected to be the end of Title 42, and its tough restrictions. El Paso declared an emergency
But on Saturday, the same streets had no sign of the migrants who had camped there
He said his members had waited two years for a chance to explain to the president that the surge in illegal crossings meant they spent all their time on paperwork rather than protecting the border from drug smugglers and criminals.
Border officials detained a record 2.2 million migrants in the last full fiscal year.
And the issue has been used by Republicans to attack Biden throughout his presidency, accusing him of opening the country's borders.
Biden on Thursday launched plans to block Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, expanding the nationalities of migrants who can be sent back to Mexico.
Combined with the visit to El Paso, one of the crossing hotspots, supporters say it demonstrates that he is serious about tackling the problem.
Some opponents have grudgingly conceded the benefits of the trip.
Border agents' union were dismissive of the visit to a cleaned-up El Paso in a Friday tweet
The Texas National Guard deployed along the border in El Paso at the end of last year. They are still there and have set up two miles of extra fencing with razor wire
Officials say their presence has forced migrants away from El Paso as they look to cross into the U.S. from Mexico, although numbers have dwindled anyway as they always do in January
This is what Biden would have seen in mid-December when crowds crossed the Rio Grande river that separates the two countries and handed themselves in to border patrols
