Poof!
Not a single one of those hundreds of illegal migrants that were camping on El Paso, Texas, streets amid piles of clothing donated by local citizens just days ago were available to greet and thank President Joe Biden when he visited the city on Monday.
Nope, they suddenly disappeared — thanks to an evacuation cleanup crew — at least somewhere else out of camera range.
The union representing Border Patrol agents observed that all that effort to clear streets of people sleeping without shelter in time for Biden's trip might have been avoided with a simpler plan.
They tweeted, "We suggest just landing in Des Moines, Iowa and telling him it's El Paso. He'll never know the difference."
What else didn't Biden or most mainstream media viewers see during his carefully crafted four-hour tour to the empty Bridge of the Americas Port of Entry point and El Paso County migrant services center?
Joe didn't see any evidence of a Trump wall; just a barren section of the old original one.
He didn't witness the likely hundreds of illegal migrants that were entering through the open Eagle Pass, Texas, border section during the time of his brief visit.
The president didn't demonstrate any interest whatsoever in meeting with desperate ranchers and terrified families along the border whose unprotected properties are constantly being trespassed by Mexican cartel-orchestrated invaders.
Nor was there any sign of vice president aka border czar, Kamala Harris, who was badgered by members of her own party into making a similarly ceremonial 2021 appearance.
During an NBC News interview in June of that year, when Lester Holt had asked her point blank whether she had any plans to go there, she responded three times: "We've been to the border."
After Holt corrected her — "You haven't been to the border" — Harris offered up her trademark nervous giggle and then vacuously said, "I don't understand the point that you're making."
Biden's belated Sunday photo-op stop in El Paso occurred in response to pleas from Democrat leaders of migrant-overwhelmed communities including beleaguered Mayor Oscar Leeser who issued an embarrassing disaster declaration and Rep. Henry Cuellar who represents another Texas border district.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott briefly greeted Biden at the airport on arrival, handed him a letter, and mentioned some of the substance to reporters.
"The president who caused the chaos at the border needed to be here," Abbott said. "It just so happens he's two years and about $20 billion too late."
Texas has been erecting border barriers as Arizona removes makeshift shipping container wall sections upon demand by the White House.
Gov. Abbott has announced that Texas will begin construction of a massive new section this year which will essentially complete a portion of the multistate project initiated by former President Donald Trump.
The Biden administration is facing bipartisan criticism for creating a crisis which is clearly unsustainable. According to data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, its agents made a record 2.2 million arrests last fiscal year, ending in September.
Under party pressure, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, agreed that his state will stop sending southern border asylum seekers to New York City and Chicago after their mayors said homeless shelters were stressed "over capacity."
Although Biden gave no public remarks in El Paso, he recently offered some fecklessly feeble remedial steps under White House consideration which finally acknowledge the existence of a border problem after all.
One such initiative would provide an app on asylum-seekers' cell phones enabling them to schedule an appointment at a port of entry to have their claims reviewed for qualification before leaving their home countries.
And whereas President Biden made no mention of it in El Paso, he has had an apparent epiphany in discovering a possible link between illegal border crossings and deadly Mexican cartel opioid trafficking.
While raising the issue on Dec. 9 with Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — after critics blasted Biden for not paying enough attention to the deadly scourge — Biden said that fentanyl has killed "100,000 Americans so far."
In fact, that number grossly understated the disaster ... where the official number was nearly twice that high between 2018-2021 alone.
Enriched by enormous U.S. drug and human trafficking profits, these cartels pose heavily armed threats to any future hope of willing or effective Government of Mexico support in effectuating border control measures.
Just days before Biden left for Jan. 9-10 Mexico City meetings with President Obrador and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, Mexico's military captured Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of former kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
The U.S. has requested the extradition of the younger Guzmán, who was indicted in 2018 in Washington on charges of smuggling methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana.
Meanwhile, as cartels conduct war against Mexico and America, Joe Biden's attention is consumed with a different battle.
In a show of force that must make those cartel leaders tremble with mirth, his climate czar John Kerry will attend those Mexico City meetings to wage war against fossil energy and weather.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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