COVINGTON, Ky. — President Biden is considering a visit to the U.S. southern border next week as his administration strains under a flood of migration.
Mr. Biden has not visited the border as president despite the illegal immigration chaos that’s dogged his administration. He could stop at the border on his way to a Jan. 9 meeting in Mexico City with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.
When asked by reporters if he would use the occasion to visit the border, the president responded: “That’s my intention.”
The stopover would mark Mr. Biden’s first visit to the border since taking office.
“We’ll believe it when we see it,” Republican National Committee spokesman Tommy Pigott said Wednesday following the president’s remarks.
Mr. Pigott noted that Mr. Biden pledged “I should go down” in 2021 only to claim later that he didn’t have the time.
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Mr. Biden also said last month that “there are more important things” when asked by a reporter why he wouldn’t visit the border during a recent trip to Arizona.
“After spending 282 days on vacation, it is past time for Biden to go to the border,” Mr. Pigott said. “More importantly, if he actually cared about the death and destruction at the border, he’d fire [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas, relieve [Vice President Kamala] Harris of her duties as border czar, and reverse his cruel border policies.”
“That’s what a responsible president would do, but so far Biden has proven he is not one,” he said.
Mr. Biden has faced crisis-level immigration across the U.S. border with Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has recorded 617,250 encounters with migrants so far this fiscal year, according to figures as of Dec. 29, 2022, averaging 6,858 encounters per day.
There’s also growing suspense about the fate of the pandemic-era Title 42 emergency health policy that allows the U.S. to expel some border jumpers. The Biden administration pushed to end Title 42, but the Supreme Court has temporarily ruled to keep the restrictions in place while state challenges to ending it are reviewed by the justices.
U.S. border states have warned that crisis-level immigration under the Biden administration will spiral further out of control unless Title 42 remains in place.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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