By Uriel J. García And Sneha Dey
Originally appeared in the Texas Tribune
He was greeted by Gov. Greg Abbott upon arrival at the El Paso airport. Abbott has been a chief critic of Biden’s immigration policies and has frequently called on him to visit the border over the past year.
EL PASO — President Joe Biden toured El Paso for about four hours on Sunday, visiting the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time since taking office in the White House.
He was greeted by Gov. Greg Abbott upon arrival at the El Paso airport. Abbott has been a chief critic of Biden’s immigration policies and has frequently called on him to visit the border over the past year as the number of migrant arrests has broken records.
“The president who caused the chaos at the border needed to be here. It just so happens he’s two years and about $20 billion too late,” Abbott told reporters at the airport. “He needs to step up and take swift action, including reimbursing the state of Texas toward the money we spent but providing more resources for federal government to do its job. Also this is nothing but for show unless he begins to enforce the immigration laws that already exist.”
The two spoke briefly at the airport and parted ways. Abbott’s office said he was not invited to attend the rest of the president’s tour of El Paso. Asked about his conversation with Biden, Abbott told reporters, “He said he wanted to work with us on it.”
Biden’s office said the aim of the trip was to “assess border enforcement operations and meet with local elected officials and community leaders who have been important partners in managing the historic number of migrants fleeing political oppression and gang violence.”
While in El Paso, Biden visited the Bridge of the Americas port of entry — which connects El Paso to Ciudad Juárez for tourists and commercial trade. The president will also visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center. Biden will be joined by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; Democratic U.S. Reps. Veronica Escobar of El Paso, Henry Cuellar of Laredo, and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen; El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser; and El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego.
Biden made an unscheduled stop near an 18-foot-tall border fence along the border with Mexico, according to a pool report.
When asked by reporters what he learned during his trip to El Paso, he said, “They need a lot of resources. We’re going to get it for them.”

After his brief visit, he left for Mexico City. Biden is scheduled to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the North American Leaders’ Summit on Monday and Tuesday.
The visit to the border for the president is politically fraught — as Republicans have accused Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of neglecting border security.
As Biden visited the border city, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel held a press conference in the Rio Grande Valley with community leaders to criticize the president’s “disastrous border security plan and its effects on Texas’ border communities.”
“We’re in McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, where so much of this is happening, and President Biden has still never been here,” said McDaniel, standing alongside local officials. “So we wanted to make sure that we don’t forget this part of the state and allow him to do a photo op in El Paso and pretend that the problem is gone.”
Abbott, who has made border security a top priority of his administration and who initiated the building of a state-funded border wall, said on Fox News that the Biden administration did not reach out about the El Paso visit until Saturday night, when a staffer got an email inviting Abbott to greet Biden on the tarmac.
Abbott said he hand-delivered a letter to the president at the tarmac. The letter pinned the influx of migrants on the Biden administration’s open-border policies and demanded the president take a stricter approach in securing the border.
Biden said he hasn’t read it yet, according to a pool report.
Meanwhile in El Paso’s Segundo Barrio, a neighborhood south of downtown, hundreds of migrants have slept in the street where Sacred Heart Church has been housing some migrants at night. Not everyone fits in the church’s shelter, so many have slept on the sidewalks next to it.
El Paso police recently arrested 27-year-old Steven Mathew Driscoll on suspicion of harassing and pointing a gun at some of the migrants on New Year’s Eve. Also, in the past week, El Paso police and Border Patrol agents have been arresting migrants near the church. Police say they are arresting migrants who are violating city ordinances, and Border Patrol agents say they have been arresting migrants who crossed the border without being processed.
Some migrants said they have enough money to get on a bus out of town to reunite with family in other parts of the country but are afraid to step away from the church’s premises because they are afraid they are going to be arrested by police or immigration agents.
On a recent Friday afternoon, Pastor Rafael Garcia was standing on the corner of a sidewalk looking concerned as El Paso police arrested a migrant. An officer on the scene told Garcia police were arresting the migrant on suspicion of violating a city ordinance.
Garcia said he hoped Biden recognizes that “these people are fleeing violence and are in a desperate situation.”
“So what alternative do they have?” he said.
Jorge Luis Lugo, a 26-year-old Venezuelan migrant, washed his face in a portable sink and said he wished Biden would visit the church to see the conditions migrants are living in. He said that he wished Biden’s latest immigration plan would have included migrants who have already arrived.
“After sacrificing a lot, how does he expect us to just go back?” he said. “We just want a chance to be able to work and help our families back home.”
Carolina Rodriguez, 36, said she and her husband have been sleeping on a sidewalk next to the church since Christmas Day. They left their 12- and 9-year-old daughters back home with her mother because they only want to be in the U.S. to work. She said a cousin in Florida is trying to gather up enough money to buy them plane or bus tickets out of El Paso. In the meantime, she said she would stay in El Paso to work but so far has been denied a job as a barber.
“Not all of us are bad,” she said, sitting an altar for the Virgin of Guadalupe while her husband lay down near her. “There’s a lot of us who have skills, professions and simply just want to work to get ahead in life.”
In Venezuela, she was a kindergarten teacher, but after the country’s economy collapsed, it wasn’t enough money to sustain her family. She worked various jobs such as cutting hair or making cakes, but then she began getting death threats over the phone. She said she has family members who worked for the local government, and the anonymous threats came from people saying they would kidnap her or her children unless she gave them money in return for her safety.
She said she reported it to police, but life in Venezuela was unbearable.
“I’m a big believer in God, so if He wants me here on the streets, so be it,” she said. “Soon my family will be able to get me money to get out here.”