As President Biden embarks on a national victory lap over his coronavirus spending package, he says he does not have plans to visit the U.S.-Mexico border as thousands of migrants, including unaccompanied children, flock northward from Central America.
Biden replied in the negative when reporters asked whether a trip south is on his agenda as Republicans paint the situation at the border as a “crisis” — an adjective that the White House is, so far, shunning.
“Not at the moment,” Biden said on the White House’s South Lawn as he departed for the first of his trips to tout the $1.9 trillion spending package he signed into law, which he and Democrats contend was needed to help struggling workers and the U.S. economy bounce back from the pandemic.
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The traveling salesman act was organized after Biden criticized former President Barack Obama for failing to shape the public’s perception of his 2009 package addressing the Great Recession.
Biden is set to drop into a small business in Chester, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, that will benefit from the $1.9 trillion package the president signed last week into law. On Friday, he’ll join Vice President Kamala Harris in Atlanta, where the pair will tout how they kept a campaign promise to send out $1,400 stimulus checks to eligible individuals and families. The issue became central to the twin Georgia Senate runoffs in January, which decided the chamber’s balance of power in Democrats’ favor.
But as Biden, Harris, and their respective spouses fan out across the country, Biden will not follow in the footsteps of the aides he sent to the border earlier this month to better understand the situation that’s worsened since he was sworn into office.
The White House has declined to acknowledge the country’s immigration system is in “crisis.” At the same time, the United States is “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday.
Adults who illegally cross the 2,000-mile southern border are being immediately returned to their home countries, a policy introduced last March to avoid crowding immigration facilities during the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, the spike in families and unaccompanied minors has put increased pressure on limited federal government resources.
Biden ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency over the weekend to help with his administration’s response. Officials, for instance, will house up to 3,000 migrant teenagers at the Dallas Convention Center.
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Biden also told reporters Tuesday that he has started discussions with counterparts abroad regarding whether the U.S. would share any of its surplus COVID-19 vaccine supply.
“We’re talking to several countries already,” he said. “We’ll let you know that very shortly.”
