President Joe Biden on Sunday will visit the southern border for the first time since taking office, senior administration officials said.
Biden will visit El Paso, Texas, to "address border enforcement operations and meet with local officials," it was announced Thursday, Politico reported.
Biden will visit the border before his trip to Mexico City, where he will meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the Jan. 9-10 North American Leaders' Summit.
The number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has skyrocketed since Biden took office.
Some 2.7 million migrants were apprehended at the border in fiscal year 2022, more than 800,000 above the previous year, and about four times the 646,822 apprehended in fiscal year 2020, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Title 42, a Trump-era health policy to restrict immigration during the pandemic, remains in effect after 19 Republican state attorneys general sued the government.
Biden's planned visit to the border was announced just before his scheduled speech at the White House to announce new border enforcement actions, including a new humanitarian "parole" program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.