President Joe Biden on Thursday said he plans to visit the southern border with Mexico on Sunday, for the first time since taking office, Trend reports citing ABC News.
Biden said he will visit El Paso, Texas, "to assess border enforcement operations, meet with the local officials and community leaders and the folks at the border sending me what they need that they don't have."
Since he became president, Republicans have hammered Biden on his handling of immigration and the persistent migrant crisis at the southern border, making it a top campaign issue in last year's midterm elections.
Despite that pressure, Biden has resisted their calls for him to actually visit the border.
But on Thursday, Biden accused Republicans of not having been "serious about this at all." And he said that after he gets feedback from officials on the border, he would "make it public" what those officials say "they need, they don't have -- to try to convince my Republican colleagues they should do something."
Biden had already planned to visit Mexico City on Monday and Tuesday to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. That so-called "North American Leaders Summit," also known as the "Three Amigos Summit," will focus on climate change, migration, the environment, the economy and other topics, the White House has said.
The Biden administration also announced Thursday it planned to send more migrants back to Mexico, even as it fights in court to end the "Title 42" pandemic-era restrictions the federal government is currently enforcing. Working with the Mexican government, the administration expects to send as many as 30,000 unauthorized Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan migrants to Mexico each month.