President Joe Biden's anticipated visit to the southern border is now officially planned for this Sunday, a White House spokesperson told Mediaite.
"On Sunday, January 8, the President will travel to El Paso, Texas," the statement from Thursday read, adding that the "trip will be pooled press."
Biden is set to "assess border enforcement operations and meet with local elected officials and community leaders" during the trip, stressing their work "in managing the historic number of migrants fleeing" turmoil in Latin America.
The official date comes after Biden alluded to a border trip several times this week amid his travels throughout the Midwest. On Wednesday, he had told a reporter while leaving Kentucky that it was his "intention" to visit before heading to Mexico.
It also follows the president's new border agenda laid out in a speech on Thursday, reinstating the former President Donald Trump-era "transit ban," prohibiting asylum claims in the U.S. unless first turned away by a neighboring country.
Biden also revealed in his speech that the U.S. would accept 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The move is part of an effort to reel in the roughly 204,155 November border encounters, a 4% increase from October.
"Instead of safe and orderly process at the border, we've got a patchwork system that simply doesn't work as it should," Biden said in the Roosevelt Room.
"My message is this: if you're trying to leave Cuba, Nicaragua, or Haiti, ... or have agreed to begin a journey to America, do not just show up at the border," he continued. "Stay where you are and apply legally from there."
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