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The president of the United States, Joe Biden, was photographed this Thursday in front of the Rio Grande (Rio Grande, for Americans) with members of the border patrols in Brownsville (Texas). At the same time, his most likely rival in the November presidential elections, Donald Trump, posed in front of the wire fence on the bank of that same river in Eagle Pass, also in Texas, about 500 kilometers away. The gestures have been similar. The speeches, however, have been very different. While Biden has offered unity on immigration policy to his rival, Trump has used his toughest speech on immigration, speaking of an “invasion,” of “men of fighting age” arriving who look like “warriors.” “This is like a war,” he said.
Biden has been speaking with representatives of the border patrols and immigration services before giving a speech in which he has been conciliatory and has asked former president, Donald Trump, to support the law that Republicans and Democrats agreed to increase security on the border . “The bipartisan agreement on border security would be a victory for the American people,” he said, noting that it would give them the ability to “temporarily close the border,” something that would be activated when the number of illegal crossings exceeded certain thresholds.
“Friends, it’s very simple. It is time to act. “It is long past time to act,” Biden said in his speech. “They desperately need more resources,” he said at the Brownsville border patrol center, with about 50 agents present. He has talked about officers working overtime, “making great sacrifices,” for the past four years. “It is time to take a step forward and provide them with much more staff and capacity. “We also need more immigration judges to help us manage the two million pending cases,” he stated.
“This bill was in the United States Senate, on track to be passed, and then it was derailed by partisan politics,” the president said during his speech. And then he addressed Trump directly: “We can do it together. You know and I know it is the toughest, most efficient and most effective border security bill this country has ever seen. Instead of playing politics with the issue, why join me and we’ll do it? Or I will join you,” he appealed to his rival.
Trump, on the other hand, did not mince words in Eagle Pass. He gave an incendiary speech, full of lies and xenophobic messages, with far-right echoes, as he usually does. In his rhetoric, immigrants have left prisons and asylums: “These are the people who are coming into our country, and they come from jails and they come from prisons and they come from mental institutions and they come from asylums and they are terrorists. They are introducing them into our country. And it’s horrible,” Trump said.
“The United States is being invaded by migrant crime Biden. It is a new form of vicious violation of our country. It is migrant crime. We call it Biden migrant crime, but that’s a little long,” he also said. He spoke of the arrival of immigrants as an “invasion,” a “Joe Biden invasion,” he said, referring to the fact that those arriving are “men of fighting age” who look like “warriors.” “This is like a war,” he said.
He also repeated other of his nonsensical arguments, such as that the immigrants who arrive speak languages that had never before been heard in the United States. “Millions of people from unknown places, from unknown countries, who do not speak languages. Languages that no one speaks come to our country. They are true foreign languages. Nobody speaks them,” he asserts. Beyond the absurdity of this concept of “languages that no one speaks,” in reality the vast majority are Latin American immigrants (most of them Mexican and Venezuelan) who speak Spanish, a language that is used massively both in Eagle Pass and in Brownsville as in many other parts of the United States. The former president has promised, if he returns to the White House, “the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants.”
For Biden, it was his second visit to the border as president, having gone to El Paso in January of last year. Trump’s pressures have derailed a bill that included aid to Ukraine and Israel, but also reforms to curb illegal immigration on the border with Mexico, which has broken records during Biden’s presidency. The border measures were a Republican demand to give the green light to aid to Ukraine and Israel, but when push comes to shove, they have preferred to take a step back and continue using the migratory flow as an electoral weapon.
Legal immigration
Biden’s policy of trying to open legal pathways for orderly migration to the United States while toughening punishments against illegal pathways has not stopped the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States. The legislation allows migrants to apply for asylum, regardless of how they arrive, and they arrive in such numbers that it overwhelms the capacity of an underfunded immigration system. That allows them, in practice, to settle in while their cases drag on for years.
Dozens of people were waiting this Thursday at the Xeriscape park in Brownsville, located just across the border from Mexico. Those who gather there have managed to reach the United States with papers, for family reunification or other reasons. For many of them, arriving has been an odyssey of several months. José Antonio Romero, a 19-year-old Venezuelan from Mérida, is waiting for some friends who have not yet been able to cross. He wants to say goodbye to them before heading to Oceano (California). “I want to see my brother and work,” he explains.
Another Venezuelan speaks loudly behind her with her relatives via videoconference: “We are coronating,” she tells them. She is elated. Ricardo, a 22-year-old Venezuelan, and Patrix, a 19-year-old Peruvian, are also excited. They are a couple and after crossing the border they head to Tulsa (Oklahoma) where his mother is. Ricardo, who began his trip in October, had to cross the Darién Pass: “It was quite tough, the danger that one runs there is strong, you have to climb, climb mountains, cross the river several times, but since I am young I don’t “It cost so much.” “There is a natural risk and also of being attacked and robbed,” he adds.
“The most difficult thing to get through is Mexico,” says Patrix, “because since we entered it is very difficult to go up to Mexico City to make an appointment. They don’t let us get on the buses, we have to do everything on foot, they make us pay to go from town to town. There are kidnappings, robberies, many things happen and are not told as much,” she says.
The Venezuelans who have crossed the border have arrived through the legal channels that the Biden Government has opened. They come with an initial two-year work permit. The idea is to open these routes somewhat and toughen repression against irregular entries, to discourage them. The theory sounds good, but in practice legal avenues have not eased pressure on the border.
Brownsville is no longer one of the hot spots for illegal crossings. A tour along the river near the city, twinned with Matamoros, on the other side of the border, this Thursday showed areas protected with barbed wire and abundant border patrols. That area is the one that the president visited to receive information from the teams working on the ground and to whom he promised this Thursday an effort so that they have more resources: “I promise you that we are going to fight like crazy to get you this bipartisan proposal,” he said. President.
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