El Paso cleans up migrant camps before Joe Biden border visit
By Isabel Vincent and Luis Chaparro
Authorities in El Paso have been tearing down migrant encampments under cover of darkness and dispatching hundreds of migrants across the border to Mexico ahead of President Biden’s scheduled Sunday visit to the overwhelmed border town.
Encampments near the downtown bus station and the Sacred Heart Church, which operates a shelter, have been dismantled by local authorities over the last two nights as the city prepares to host President Biden’s first visit to the southern border, according to a photographer for The Post who witnessed it.
Six buses loaded with mostly Venezuelan migrants were spotted crossing a downtown bridge to Ciudad Juarez, the frontier city in Mexico, Saturday, as police escorted dozens more to a pedestrian crossing.
A Border Patrol agent who did not want to be identified told The Post that 200 people were sent back to Mexico Saturday.
“People are saying that if you are out in the streets the Border Patrol will get you and deport you because the President is coming to El Paso and they don’t want to show him the reality of things,” said Maria Rodriguez, 23, from Venezuela, who told The Post she has been living in a dumpster in El Paso for the last three days. “I hope we get shelter tonight because it took us a lot of courage to go out of that dumpster after three days…We just don’t want to keep running. All we are asking is for one chance.”
Another Venezuelan migrant told The Post he had been sleeping on the porch of a downtown church, and was angry with Biden for making false promises to migrants when he took office in 2021.
“I really think politicians are playing with us,” said Joan Enriquez, 21. “Both side, Democrats and Republicans. We are props to them because like Biden, he first said he wanted to help us, and then he shut the border down and we can’t find a way to get legal in this country.”
Critics slammed El Paso authorities for trying to sanitize the chaos ahead of Biden’s visit.
Police as well as Texas Department of Public Safety officers and US Border Patrol patrolled the downtown area where migrant encampments had been set up, according to the El Paso Times. The patrols began to increase Tuesday night, and have continued through Saturday.
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