WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th June, 2021) Former President Donald Trump will be joining Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott on a tour of the US-Mexico border on Wednesday to call attention to the immigration crisis in the region.
Trump has expressed frustration with the Biden administration rolling back his strict immigration policies, such as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, which helped deter the flow of migrants to the United States. However, the current administration continues to leave in place the former president's public health policy, known as Title 42, which allows US immigration authorities to immediately turn most migrants and their families away at the border.
Trump and Abbott will reportedly visit the area around the Texas border town of Edinburg, Texas, headquarters of what US immigration enforcement has dubbed the Rio Grande Valley sector, the longtime hotspot for the seasonal immigration crisis.
"Securing the border is not just important to Texas - it is vital to America," Abbott said in a statement on Tuesday. "Tomorrow President Trump will join me and law enforcement officials for a border security briefing in Weslaco [Texas]."
The state of Texas recently authorized $250 million to be used to begin building more border wall as part of the governor's mission to stem illegal immigration and drug trafficking.
Texas and Mexico share a 1,254-mile border, but there are many gaps where migrants can easily bypass the steel bollard fencing.
President Joe Biden, in one of his first actions as US president, issued an executive order to halt all border wall projects that were carried over from the Trump administration. Trump was able to construct 400 miles of the large steel wall structure despite long court battles and opposition from Democrats in Congress.
On Monday, Abbott posted a video of a tractor clearing shrub on land somewhere along the Texas-Mexico border in order to prepare it for the building process, however, he pointed out they have yet to hire a program manager to oversee the project.
On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris made a trip to the Texas border town of El Paso after facing much criticism for not making the trip sooner after Biden put her in charge of handling the border crisis.
The vice president faced more backlash for not visiting the Rio Grande Vally region in south Texas, where hundreds of thousands of asylum-seeking migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico have been pouring into the United States.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data revealed earlier this month that the number of asylum-seeking migrants apprehended along the southern border with Mexico in May set another record, reaching a new 21-year monthly high of 180,034. More than 929,868 migrants have been apprehended for illegally crossing the US-Mexico border since October, putting the Biden administration on pace to break the previous annual record of 977,509 set in 2019.
The United States has apprehended more than 1.5 million illegal migrants at the southern border with Mexico in 1986, 1996, 1998-2000, according to CBP data.
