President Joe Biden is taking a trip to the southern border with Mexico on Thursday, but it’s “too little, too late,” according to the Border Patrol Union.
On Monday, the union said in a statement that Biden’s trip to the border is just a ploy to try to save his re-election bid, and it’s being done at the expense of the safety of the American public.
In the statement, the union says that “there would be no point in visiting the border now” if the assertions that Biden has made that he’s done all he can to secure the southern border were actually true.
The union explained:
“But, even if [Biden] were to put the proper policies in place at this late hour, he’d be doing it only to try to save his Presidency. And self-serving actions when time is winding down should always give Americans pause. Common sense dictates that as a lame duck, he’d revert to this open border policies if re-elected.
“Biden is going to the border now solely to try to save himself. Border security should never be about politics, it should always be about the safety and security of this great nation and the American people.”
On Thursday, BIden plans to visit Brownsville, Texas, to see the effects of the southern border crisis. His visit will come on the same day that his likely challenger in the November presidential election, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, is planning to visit another Texas border town — Eagle Pass.
Unlike Trump, who has traveled to Texas and specifically the southern border quite often both as a candidate and as a president, Biden has largely stayed away altogether.
In his more than three years in the White House, Biden has only traveled to the southern border one other time — in January of 2023, when he went to El Paso.
One thing that Biden’s trip does highlight is just how important immigration and border security will be for the presidential election. Democrats and Republicans have focused heavily on border security in recent months, with both sides in Congress trying to hammer out a deal that would amp up security at the southern border.
Illegal immigration has been a huge problem during the majority of Biden’s tenure in the White House, as his administration has been largely viewed as very lax to immigration. They let many of Trump’s border security measures lapse last year, which caused another surge in migration at the southern border after it was already a problem.
For his part, Biden has said that it’s the GOP’s fault that negotiations on a bipartisan border security package broke down in the Senate, as Trump opposed the plan that the president says would’ve tightened restrictions on asylum seekers while also creating daily limits for how many border crossings could happen.
The Biden administration has been trying to institute crackdowns at the southern border while also increasing the legal pathways that migrants could seek to enter the country legally.
However, many people and organizations focused on border security view all of these efforts as way to little and way too late.
