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Vice President JD Vance was scheduled to visit Eagle Pass on Wednesday.
The border city had been at the center of the fight between the Biden administration and the State of Texas over immigration enforcement. It was also a hotspot for illegal crossings at the end of 2023 but has since seen much fewer migrant encounters over the past year.
Vance was expected to get an aerial tour of the border city, visit an immigration processing center and deliver remarks on the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies in Shelby Park, a public park on the banks of the Rio Grande seized by the State of Texas.
Amerika Garcia Greywal is with the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, which assists migrants across the Rio Grande in Piedras Negras. She said even though the area has a heavy presence of Texas National Guard soldiers, it has been the Mexican government that has stopped people from making it there.
"They had the Mexican military, the Mexican national guard out patrolling the riverbanks and keeping people from even getting on busses to come up toward the border, and they were also searching vehicles on the Mexican side to keep any fentanyl and other drugs from coming into the United States," she explained.
She added that she hopes Vance will be able to see firsthand the immigration enforcement Mexico is doing as negotiations continue to put an end to President Trump's 25 percent tariffs that took effect on Tuesday.
A large base camp is currently being constructed in the city for Texas National Guard soldiers deployed on state orders.
Vance's visit came just one day after President Trump addressed Congress for the first time of his second term. NPR reported that he "spent portions of his remarks highlighting his immigration-related priorities, including his declaration of a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border, the deployment of military to the border and arrest rates."
NPR explained that "Trump asked for funding from Congress to carry out 'the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder President Dwight D. Eisenhower,' a reference to 1954's 'Operation Wetback,' — a racist term used to refer to migrants who crossed the Rio Grande. ... The U.S. government estimates that the effort rounded up more than a million Mexican immigrants and some U.S. citizens."
NPR added that New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat delivered the Democrats' rebuttal in Spanish, and he highlighted an executive order making English the national language.
"My people, although we have been here for 20 generations, 20 years or 20 days, we all came to the United States of America for the American dream — the possibility to achieve a better life and create a better future for our children by working hard, embracing diversity and taking the opportunity this great nation gives us all," Espaillat said in Spanish.
Espaillat added: "Trump's migration policy is not designed the way he and his allies say, to deport those who really should be deported. We want a new immigration law that secures the border, protects the DREAMers, the agricultural workers and maintains our families unified."
