Last week, President Biden faced growing criticism over his administration’s handling of the crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico. The administration announced more aggressive measures, and it tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to work out a diplomatic solution with Central American countries and Mexico.
President Biden has been knocked by Republicans but also by the presidents of Mexico and El Salvador.
Blame Biden
Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador said at a news conference last week,
“Expectations were created that with President Biden’s government there would be a better treatment of migrants. This has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, to want to cross the border thinking that it is easier to do.”
El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele told Fox News earlier this month that citizens are needed there to help build the economy, and despite his best efforts to keep them from leaving the nation, Biden’s alleged support for immigrants is hurting both countries:
“If you send hardworking people and talented people and people who want to risk it just to go to work, you want to keep them here because those will be the drivers of your economy. You don’t want them there so that they can send a remittance, which would be a small portion of what they would earn and produce; you want them to produce here.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested 97,000 migrants trying to enter the U.S. in February, the most since 2019. The paper reported that an average of 523 unaccompanied children are being apprehended each day at the border, and the U.S. is having difficulty housing them.
The Associated Press reported the administration opened 10,000 new beds in convention centers across the south, including a new 3,000-person facility in San Antonio and a 1,400-person location in the San Diego convention center.
Despite criticism of Washington’s handling of the border crisis, including Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who called VP Harris the “worst possible choice” for the job, Biden said his second-in-command is up for the challenge.
“When she speaks, she speaks for me,” he said.
Republicans Visit Border
A group of Republican Senators visited Donna, TX, to get an idea of the situation unfolding at the southern border. The group reported that Biden officials asked them to delete pictures showing the squalid conditions.
“None of us would have gone down there if we were going to be muzzled,” Senator Mike Braun told the Washington Examiner. The paper said the facility Braun visited is running at 700-percent capacity.
Braun told the paper that the senators could hear “smugglers and coyotes” from the other side of the border with the Rio Grande essentially taunting Border Patrol agents. Braun said,
“Most of it in Spanish, telling the border guards that whatever you do, we’re coming… That kind of hit home in such an anecdotal way because it is one story that kind of is a metaphor for what’s happening all up and down the border.”
TREND FORECAST: According to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, 7 percent of Americans disagree with how the Biden administration is handling the border crisis.
As economic conditions continue to deteriorate, the border crisis in the United States and across the globe will escalate. We maintain our forecast for the growth of anti-immigration, anti-tax, anti-vax, anti-establishment political parties.
