Tipsheet

Did You Notice What Was Missing From Biden's Border Photo-Op?

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  March 04, 2024 12:01 PM

Over the course of his roughly five decades of political life, Joe Biden had never visited the US-Mexico border. The White House cited a campaign-related, drive-by trip he'd taken near the border years ago, but couldn't turn up a single example of an actual Biden border visit prior to his box-checking exercise in January of last year.  Under pressure from his party and his 'news' media allies, Biden flew down to El Paso, Texas for a few hours.  Local officials dramatically cleaned up the area, and Biden reportedly came and went without physically seeing a single one of the millions of illegal immigrants who've crossed the boundary on his watch.  A little over a year later, with immigration surging as a top issue and his numbers floundering even further, Biden returned to the border last week.  Rather than hitting one of the current hot spots in terms of active crossings, the president's team had him quickly swing through a relatively quiet border town.  

He and his entourage attacked the state of Texas.  They blamed Republicans.  The president shuffled around, fretting about not standing on his marks for the cameras, and appearing to read pre-prepared questions from notecards.  Then he left.  And just like last year, according to Fox correspondent Griff Jenkins, Biden once again did not see any migrants during his photo-op pitstop.  I asked Jenkins whether Biden may have done so this time around.  His answer:

“The answer, as best I can report, is no. And I asked the Border Patrol agents here whether or not he did… and the reason why I was wondering if he might have is we put out… there was a group [earlier that morning] of about 120 migrants that cut with bolt cutters through the razor wire and crossing this area. So, hours before the president got here, there was a group of migrants, had he wanted to to meet the newcomers.”

His use of 'newcomers' is a reference to this new euphemism from the administration, which has apparently joined "undocumented migrants" and "asylum seekers" as alternative descriptors for "illegal immigrants" (in addition to "irregular migration" replacing "illegal immigration" in the leftist parlance.  Brandon Judd, the Border Patrol Union chief confirmed to me that Jenkins' reporting is accurate:


That's really an extraordinary fact, if you stop and think about it for a moment.  Meanwhile, the numbers are surging again, with the cartels steering the illegal traffic to different sectors:


More than 7,000 per day.  For reference, President Obama's DHS Secretary famously stated that 1,000 illegal crossings on a daily basis would constitute an 'overwhelming' crisis level.  The White House Press Secretary, echoing Biden, claims that the president doesn't have any executive authority to alleviate this problem of his own making.  It's a blatant lie, as even this very administration recently leaked to reporters that Biden is considering taking the very sort of action that he and his team insist isn't available to him.  Here is a flashback clip of Biden's now-impeached Homeland Security boss bragging on MSNBC that the president had unilaterally reversed countless Trump-era border policies, many of which were working well:

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This is both an admission of guilt and an insulting exposure of their current gaslighting.  And with criminal migrants harming increasing numbers of Americans (it seems that in addition to not seeing a single illegal immigrant with his own eyes during his phony border visits, Biden also has not said the name of the UGA murder victim whose life was stolen by someone who exploited the president's open borders policies), it looks like it will be up to state and local leaders to try to shame the federal government into doing even the bare minimum elements of its job on enforcement:


This bogus blame game is just pathetic:

"So far DHS has paroled over 86,000 Venezuelans into the U.S. using the parole program (completely separate from the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans crossing illegally) despite the fact that U.S. law is specific in that parole is only to be granted on a “case by case” basis for urgent humanitarian reasons (medical procedure, funeral, etc), or significant public benefit (testify in a trial as a witness etc). According to ICE data, only 834 Venezuelans were deported in fiscal year 2023, despite 335,000 Venezuelans being encountered in the same year. They aren’t going anywhere anytime soon."


I'll leave you with this exchange, as well as an example of how the media is trying to run interference for this crowd: