Republican governors simply visited the U.S.-Mexico border. Right here’s what occurred

A gaggle of Republican governors visited the U.S.-Mexico border Wednesday to advertise a 10-point border plan for President Joe Biden, simply over two weeks after requesting a White Home assembly the governors mentioned he ignored.

“If the president gained’t meet with us, then we’ll share our coverage concepts as we speak,” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey mentioned at a press convention in Mission, Texas.

The governors’ proposals embody deploying extra legislation enforcement on the border, finishing the U.S.-Mexico border wall and reinstating the “stay in Mexico” coverage that requires asylum-seekers to attend for his or her immigrations hearings exterior of the U.S.

“We are able to flip issues round, we are able to preserve medication out of our communities and our colleges, and we are able to make our streets safer,” Ducey mentioned. “We are able to have an immigration coverage that doesn’t embody males on horseback herding migrants.”

Migrant encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border had been on the rise throughout the Trump administration and fell sharply in April 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic started. They’ve since skyrocketed underneath Biden, reaching a 21-year high this summer time.

Biden’s strategy to the border consists of rescinding some insurance policies enacted underneath former President Donald Trump and protecting others. The Biden administration ended the “stay in Mexico” coverage and elevated the refugee cap to 125,000 refugees, from 15,000, a historic low underneath Trump.

However Biden saved in place Title 42, a Trump-era coverage opposed by the ACLU and a few congressional Democrats that’s been used to expel giant numbers of migrants en masse, ostensibly to forestall the unfold of the coronavirus. The administration has additionally publicly requested migrants to not come to the U.S.

“Now just isn’t the time to come back, for a variety of causes, together with we don’t have the immigration system up and operating in the best way we wish, together with there’s nonetheless a pandemic and Title 42 stays in place,” White Home press secretary Jen Psaki mentioned at a briefing final month.

Republican governors are unconvinced Biden has issues underneath management.

“Both he’s unwilling to unravel this disaster or he doesn’t understand how, so we’re right here to supply options,” Ducey mentioned.

Joel Martinez, Related Press

Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the one different southern border Republican governor, have taken issues into their very own fingers. Earlier this yr, they despatched officers from their states’ Nationwide Guard and Division of Public Security to the border, and in June, they requested for reinforcements.

In a letter to fellow governors of each events in June, Ducey and Abbott requested their colleagues to “ship all out there law-enforcement sources to the border in protection of our sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

What adopted was Republican governors as distant as Iowa and South Dakota sending in their very own Nationwide Guard troops and state legislation enforcement officers. Democrats have dismissed it as a political stunt.

“Whereas Biden continues to dither, Texas and different states are taking motion to do the federal authorities’s job,” Abbott mentioned.

Ducey and Abbott had been joined Wednesday by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon.

Joel Martinez, Related Press