On Sunday, President Biden finally visited the U.S.-Mexico Border after two years in office. Ironically, one highlight of President Biden's trip was a photo-op in front of the border wall erected by the Trump Administration to deter illegal border crossings from Mexico—the very same border wall that he and other Democrats pledged to cease building. In recent weeks, both Democrats and Republicans have criticized President Biden for the border crisis created by his administration.
Biden got his photo-op by the border wall. The same wall his party stopped construction on.
— Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) January 9, 2023
Nice wall. https://t.co/Bfr6UZeTFL
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) January 9, 2023
The President's visit was just days after he announced a new immigration policy allegedly meant to address the major crisis at the border. However, as Andrew McCarthy explains, the policy does nothing to substantively address the root cause of the crisis:
To address this political embarrassment, Biden has concocted a form of what we might call “migrant laundering.” The illegal aliens will now apply for parole before they get here, so that when they arrive at the border — voila! — they are no longer illegal; they’ll have their Biden parole codes. Border agents (the Welcoming Committee) will find the code right there on the app, perhaps loaded onto one of those cellphones illegal aliens are given gratis, courtesy of Uncle Sam (a.k.a the American taxpayer). That means there will no longer be reason to count these aliens in government stats as illegals caught at the border and then released onto our streets. You’re to conclude that the aliens are no longer illegal because they have Biden administration parole authorization, as if that were the same thing as authorization under the laws of the United States.
The result: The administration will tell us that there has been a dramatic decline in the number of “migrants” “encountered” each month while trying to cross the border “without authorization.” Sure, the exact same thing that was happening before will still be happening: Wave after wave of illegal aliens will arrive at the border and be ushered into the country. But we’ll be told that because “encounters” are down, the president has “solved” the border crisis — even as it further metastasizes when Title 42 is rescinded.
Needless to say, this is illegal. It is both a gross violation of the narrow, statutory parole authority Congress has granted the executive branch for decades, and an unconstitutional usurpation by the president of Congress’s power to set the conditions for lawful entry into the United States. In impeachment parlance, Biden is willfully failing to execute the laws faithfully, and rather than preserving the Constitution as his oath requires, he is shredding it.
Taking into account how many hundreds of migrant contacts U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents make every day at the border, it is unlikely that President Biden's sanitized visit gave him an accurate picture of how bad the crisis has become. Shockingly, "he did not appear to see or meet with migrants."
Not a real visit. https://t.co/Ttj6u7kUgR
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) January 9, 2023
As Bill Melugin reported: "You have to make an active effort to go down to El Paso and the border these days and not see a single migrant."
.@BillFOXLA weighs in on Biden's visit to the border:
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 10, 2023
"You have to make an active effort to go down to El Paso and the border these days and not see a single migrant." pic.twitter.com/PRxt2Guq71
Americans have urged President Biden to visit the southern border of the United States to understand the devastating social and economic impacts that his policies have had on communities across the nation. While the President recently changed his tune and began to acknowledge the existence of a border crisis, this visit to the border only shows how out of touch he is with Americans.
Biden departs his border drive-by just as quickly as he arrived — his first-ever visit to the border in his 50+ years in politics and 80+ years of life.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 8, 2023
Officials had the town sanitized and illegal immigrant encampments cleared before Biden arrived. pic.twitter.com/AL4Ef72E3s