Greg Abbott Handed Letter Of Insults To Biden Before First Presidential Border Visit

Joe Biden made his first Presidential visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on Sunday. Gov. Greg Abbott met the President at the tarmac as the latter landed in the Lone Star State, and hand-delivered a letter laced with insults where he'd laid down criticism against the administration's border policies.

Abbott also ensured to include his opinion of Biden's visit to the border in the letter, which he shared on Twitter and wrote, "His trip is $20 billion too little & 2 years too late."

"When you finish the photo-ops in a carefully stage-managed version of El Paso, you have a job to do," Abbott wrote in the letter and laid out the five steps the current administration could take to secure the border, which includes building Trump's infamous border wall.

Migrants arriving at the border rose dramatically after Biden took office in January 2021. More than 2.3 million arrests were reportedly made during the government's 2022 fiscal year which ended on Sept. 30.

In the letter, Abbott slammed Biden for putting off the visit for two years and claimed that Biden's border policies "emboldened the cartels."

The Texas governor also praised Biden's predecessor and claimed the government achieved "historically low levels of illegal immigration" under former President Donald Trump.

"America is suffering the worst illegal immigration in the history of the country" under Biden's watch, he wrote.

"Texans are paying an especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you if given the chance," Abbott's letter mentioned.

Later in the day, the governor spoke to reporters, further criticizing Biden's visit, saying it would only turn out meaningful if existing immigration laws were enforced.

The border visit was "nothing but for show unless [the administration] begins to enforce the immigration laws already that exist in the United States of America that are contained in the letter that was provided to the president today," Abbott said.

Biden's visit to the border lasted about four hours, USAToday reported. He walked along the border wall that separates El Paso -- the biggest corridor for illegal crossings – from Juarez, Mexico, where he met with officials as well as those dealing with the humanitarian crisis. "They need a lot of resources," Biden told reporters when asked what he learned. "We're going to get it for them."

To mitigate the migrant crisis, Biden announced on Jan. 5, that the country would immediately turn away Nicaraguans, Cubans, and Haitians arriving in the U.S. illegally through the Mexican border.

"Do not, do not just show up at the border. Stay where you are and apply from there," he advised. The new rules are an expansion of an ongoing effort to curb the number of Venezuelan migrants in the country, brought into effect on Oct. 12. People from the South American country entering the U.S. by walking or swimming across the border were immediately returned to Mexico under Title 42, which suspends the right to asylum under the U.S. and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Venezuelan migrants were processed 22,044 times in October 2022 and recorded a 35% drop from the record high of 33,804 reported in September.