Abbott hands Biden letter calling his 'photo-op' border visit '$20 billion too little and two years too late'

Millions of illegal aliens have beat President Joe Biden to the U.S.-Mexico border, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) won't let him forget it.

On his way to Mexico City to meet with Mexican and Canadian leaders for the North American Leaders' Summit, Biden stopped off in El Paso — his first visit to the beleaguered southern border since taking office.

Abbott was waiting on the tarmac for the president with a strongly-worded letter in hand.

The letter made clear that Biden's "visit to our southern border with Mexico today is $20 billion too little and two years too late."

Predictably 'sanitized'

During his stopover in El Paso, Biden managed to avoid meeting or interacting with any one of the millions of illegal aliens who have poured over the border during his time in office.

Congresswoman Mayra Flores (R-Texas) shared images on Twitter intimating that the consequences of Biden's actions had been hidden from sight:

The New York Post reported that authorities in the Democrat-run city had covertly torn down illegal alien encampments and hidden migrants from view.

The Border Patrol Union tweeted, "El Paso being cleaned up as if nothing unusual ever happened there. Just in time for Biden's 'visit to the border'. We suggest just landing in Des Moines, Iowa and telling him it's El Paso. He'll never know the difference."

A senior Biden administration official suggested to CNN that this was merely "coincidental."

Abbott, however, predicted this "coincidence" in the letter he handed to the president.

The letter noted that Biden's visit "avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs and sidesteps the thousands of angry Texas property owners whose lives have been destroyed by your border politics."

"Even the city you visit has been sanitized of the migrant camps which had overrun downtown El Paso because your Administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans experience on a daily basis ... the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted," wrote Abbott.

The Democratic El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser, allegedly instructed by the White House not to declare an emergency over the border crisis, did so in last month after his city was overwhelmed by illegal aliens.

Leeser noted that neither asylum-seekers nor the El Paso community were safe.

Nearly 500,000 illegal aliens had already been encountered at the border by November this fiscal year. 2.37 million criminal noncitizens poured over the southern border last year and millions more stole over in 2021.

Abbott underscored in his letter to Biden that "under President Trump, the federal government achieved historically low levels of illegal immigration. Under your watch, by contrast, America is suffering the worst illegal immigration in the history of our country. Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl — frequently made with Chinese precursor chemicals and trafficked by Mexican cartels — is the leading killer of American adults ages 18-45.

A job to do

Abbott further accused Biden of failing to "defend the States against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws," and told him, once finished with his "photo-ops in a carefully stage-managed version of El Paso," that he has a job to do.

The Texas governor outlined five policy initiatives Biden should take on:

• "Comply with the many statutes mandating that various categories of aliens 'shall' be detained, and end the practice of unlawfully paroling aliens en masse";
• "stop sandbagging the implementation of the Remain-in-Mexico policy and Title 42 expulsions, and fully enforce those measures as the federal courts have ordered you to do";
• "aggressively prosecute illegal entry between ports of entry, and allow ICE to remove illegal immigrants in accordance with existing federal laws";
• "resume construction of the border wall in the State of Texas, using the billions of dollars Congress has appropriated for that purpose"; and
• "designate the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations."

Axios characterized Biden's stopover in El Paso as an effort, ahead of the 2024 presidential election, to showcase a modicum of interest in law enforcement and to take "a possible Democratic vulnerability head-on."

Ahead of the visit, Abbott said it was nothing more than "a photo op and a game of pretend."

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) wrote, "As soon as he took office, President Biden stopped enforcing America’s immigration laws, rolled back effective border policies, & offered the world a clear incentive to illegally enter the US. His overdue visit to the border is solely a poor attempt to score political points."