US President Joe Biden has arrived in Texas for his first visit of his term in office. In the border town of El Paso, a rather cold welcome awaited him on Sunday afternoon.
American President Joe Biden visits Texas and the border town of El Paso.
(dpa) At the start of his first visit to the southern border, American President Joe Biden received a letter. It was Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of the state of Texas, who presented it to Biden upon arrival at the airport. As Biden later reported, Abbott made serious allegations in it. “Today’s visit to our southern border with Mexico is $20 billion too little and two years too late,” the letter said.
Abbott accused Biden and his administration of failure. In El Paso, the migrant camps were specially cleared for Biden’s visit, Abbott said. “Their open-border policies have emboldened the cartels that get rich off the deadly fentanyl trade and even humans.” America is experiencing “the worst illegal immigration” in the country’s history. The Texans would pay a particularly high price for this.
Biden had recently started a new attempt to curb illegal immigration to the USA and announced new regulations. In December, according to senior government officials, thousands of people a day came to the southern border of the United States. On the way to Texas, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas emphasized that the aim was to create incentives for safe and orderly admission and to eliminate the smuggling organizations.
Biden has repeatedly been sharply attacked by Republicans because of the situation on the border. Republican governors of various states in the southern United States – including Abbott – had repeatedly sent coaches full of migrants to democratically governed states such as New York or the capital Washington last year to put pressure on Biden.