Donald Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott did something that the Biden administration refuses to do Wednesday. They went to the actual southern border with Mexico and spoke to the press in front of an unfinished section of the border wall. Both men trashed Biden and his administration for abdicating their responsibilities to secure the southern border.

Last week, Kamala Harris made a quick trip to El Paso with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in order to beat Trump to the border. The problem with Kamala’s trip is that she didn’t go all the way to the border, she chose to stay several miles from the border and away from its wall and barrier system that has been used in El Paso for decades. That barrier system is the reason that El Paso has some problems with illegal migrants but nothing compared to the Biden border crisis in the Rio Grande Valley. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra made his own trip to El Paso on Monday to suddenly pay attention to an emergency shelter at Fort Bliss. He didn’t go to the border in El Paso, either. Kamala even had the nerve to reference the alleged mess the Biden administration inherited from the Trump administration at the border. That was gutsy, especially since there is no denying that the Biden border crisis has produced historic levels of migrants crossing the border.

After resisting for months, Harris made her first visit to the border — in El Paso — on Friday, after Trump and Abbott announced their plans for Wednesday. Trump mocked her choice.

“We’re going to the real part of the border where there’s real problems, not a part where you look around and you don’t see anybody,” he said, alluding to the fact that the migrant surge is far more acute in Hidalgo and Starr counties, which are 800 miles closer to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador than El Paso.

Abbott mocked the focus on root causes, taking an enforcement-first, and maybe only, stance.

“They’re missing the point,” he asserted during a border security briefing at the Weslaco office of the Texas Department of Public Safety, flanked by Trump and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. “There’s one place to solve all the problems on the border, and that is on the border.”

Taking a look at root problems in Northern Triangle countries is fine but it does nothing to solve the immediate problems with the Biden border crisis. And, so far, the only solution I’ve heard from Kamala is to throw more American taxpayer money at the problem. The corrupt political leaders in those countries will benefit from American financial aid but it won’t filter down to the people who are truly in need of help. That is what has happened for several decades. American presidents think they are being compassionate yet conditions remain the same.

Abbott has begun to warn other states that what is happening in Texas and other border states won’t stay in those states. The migrants are being sent around the country, away from the overcrowded southern border. “What comes across the border does not stay at the border. In fact it goes to your states.”

One border policy that Biden has left in place from the Trump administration is Title 42. It allows for the immediate expulsion of illegal migrants due to public health safety concerns. Trump put Title 42 in effect at the border when the coronavirus pandemic began in the U.S. Unaccompanied minors are not expelled, though, and most families are not, either. The Biden administration has modified its use of Title 42 from the Trump administration’s – it is concentrating on the rise in single adult males crossing the border. The rate of recidivism has skyrocketed. The increase in drug smuggling across the border is a public safety concern, too.

In May federal authorities counted about 180,000 “border encounters.” That’s a 20-year monthly high, though Customs and Border Protection has acknowledged the numbers are inflated.

At the outset of the pandemic in March 2020, Trump invoked a public health rule called Title 42 that allows immediate expulsion. The Border Patrol has used it some 845,000 times. Migrants are turned back so quickly that about 40% try again, far higher than the 7% recidivism rate in 2019.

“These people try over and over again,” said Terrence Garrett, a political scientist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Still, the spike has been a major GOP talking point, and it was the focus of the briefing Trump and Abbott received from two sheriffs and Texas DPS director Steven McCraw.

“You can’t have public safety unless you have border security,” McCraw said. “If you have a drug problem anywhere in the country, you have a border problem. It’s cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and heroin.”

Trump acknowledged his administration’s success at the border, including their work in building the border wall. “We did a hell of a job,” Trump said at the briefing at the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Weslaco Regional Office. “Now we have an open, really dangerous border.” Abbott said the situation has become “amazing and disastrous” on the border. Governor Abbott said that during the Trump administration, he secured the border and “kept Texas and America safe.”

There was a little Twitter drama from a couple of reporters who were miffed that Governor Abbott’s efforts to keep Trump’s visit and press opportunities under control resulted in some confusion on their part.

https://twitter.com/Olivia_Beavers/status/1410261201163063309

There once was a time when the press wasn’t the story. That time has long ago passed – it completely left during the Trump administration. Jim Acosta, in particular, owes Trump a debt of gratitude for making his name well known. Joe Biden is known for controlling the press yet only now, after a long presidential campaign during the pandemic and five months into his administration, is the press starting to grumble about the lack of access to him. At least Abbott wasn’t making any reporters sit in a closet during the press conference.

Texas Democrats did the bidding of Team Biden and criticized Trump and Abbott’s trip to the border. Like Kamala and Joe, they deny any problems with the flood of migrants overwhelming the border. There’s nothing to see here.

Texas Democratic Reps. Filemón Vela and Vicente González said the visit is a distraction both from the serious issues facing Texas and the positive stories of economic development in the region.

“Instead of prioritizing Texans and making sure we grow our economy and get people back to work, Governor Abbott is creating a distracting media circus with a failed former president,” said Vela, who in 2016 gained national prominence for telling then-candidate Trump to “take your border wall and shove it up your ass.”

“Let’s make one thing clear: the narrative of a violent and insecure border region is blatantly false. The border is not a war zone, and the wall Abbott and Trump are trying to get Texans to pay for is not only a waste of their hard-earned money but also an un-American symbol of hatred that separates and intimidates our communities, harms our wildlife, and encroaches on landowner rights,” added Vela.

Vela isn’t running for re-election in 2022. Gonzalez is in his third term in Congress. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) recently ran an ad against Gonzalez for his support of Kamala’s plan for the southern border. What is that plan, anyway? She hasn’t said. And, last March, his bank account with the Bank of China was exposed so he closed it. There were rumors that Gonzalez was going to retire but last week he confirmed he will seek re-election.

Democrats can spin the Biden border crisis all they want. The numbers don’t lie. Biden has failed miserably and the way to correct the crisis is to reinstate Trump’s policies rather Biden wants to admit that or not. His stubborn denial is a dereliction of duty to the United States.