Border Patrol agents are peeved by President Biden‘s looming visit to the border in Texas, saying he’s going to a spot that’s relatively calm and won’t see the real chaos.
“He’s not going to be able to learn anything from that location,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. “You can’t learn something if you’re not willing to go to where the trouble is.”
Mr. Judd also said Mr. Biden is copying former President Donald Trump, whose own border trip was in the works for weeks before the White House quickly announced Mr. Biden would go, too.
Both men are going to be in Texas on Thursday.
Mr. Trump will be in Eagle Pass, where the immigration situation is hot and heavy. The state has erected miles of razor wire, placed a floating wall in the Rio Grande and ordered National Guard troops to take over a local park to try to stop a wave of migrants.
Meanwhile, Mr. Biden will visit Brownsville, where things are relatively calm.
“He’s going to a location that has never been a trouble spot,” Mr. Judd said, adding that agents don’t know what to expect out of the president. “We don’t even know what the purpose of the meeting is.”
He added, “That’s another reason we know this is being put together helter-skelter.”
The White House has denied it’s copying Mr. Trump.
“I planned it for Thursday,” Mr. Biden told reporters this week. “What I didn’t know was that my good friend apparently is going.”
The White House said Mr. Biden will meet with agents and hear what resources they believe they need to secure the border.
The president will also talk with local leaders. Mr. Biden brushed aside a question Monday about whether he would also talk with migrants.
Mr. Judd said Mr. Trump’s visit has been developing for more than a month, including scouting out good locations. The Secret Service and Trump campaign advance team were in Arizona four weeks ago exploring that as a possibility and talked about San Diego before settling on Eagle Pass.
Mr. Biden is making just his second visit to the border despite immigration ranking as the top issue for many voters.
On his previous visit in January 2023, he announced new policies he promised would reshape the flow of people from Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela by giving them a chance to schedule their unauthorized arrivals and be let in through an official port.
The effect was a drop in Border Patrol arrests, but the numbers quickly recovered and reached record peaks late last year.
Mr. Biden will now make his trip amid a wave of high-profile crimes blamed on illegal immigrants, including the death of a nursing student in Georgia and the slaying of a toddler in Maryland.