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The president’s arrival in this small border town two hours east of San Diego is intended to highlight what the president and his aides say is an out-of-control crisis caused by a surge of Central American families who have overwhelmed law enforcement facilities.
The answer, he argues, is construction of a border wall and legal changes to allow the authorities to treat illegal border-crossers and asylum-seekers more strictly.
“The president himself has made it clear that this is a humanitarian crisis,” Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security, said Thursday night on CNN. “He recognizes that humanitarian crisis, and he’s trying to take it to the people who can fix it.”
Weeks after declaring a national emergency at the border because Congress refused to fund construction of his border wall, Trump had threatened to close the legal ports of entry between Mexico and the United States. But on the eve of his trip to the border, Trump backed down in the face of hard criticism from the business community and top officials in his own party.
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Trump responded on Thursday by initially saying he would give Mexico a year to stop Central American migrants from traversing Mexico on their way to the United States. And the president said that if Mexico did not do its part, he would first impose tariffs on Mexican cars before shutting down the border.
On Friday morning, Trump said on Twitter that Mexico had already changed its behavior. “Mexico, for the first time in decades, is meaningfully apprehending illegals at THEIR Southern Border, before the long march up to the U.S.,” he wrote. “This is great and the way it should be.”
In Calexico, Trump will stand in front of a section of wall made out of tall steel slats. He will be presented with a plaque that commemorates “the completion of the first section of President Trump’s border wall.” The 2-mile section of wall is an upgrade to an existing section of fencing, completed in October.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.