President Donald Trump is spending Tuesday afternoon in Texas, touring a completed section of the border wall near McAllen. A White House spokesman said the president would tour "400 miles of border wall--a promise made, promise kept."
"There has been, obviously, an extra focus on dealing with these issues of border security. Border security means national security," says Victor Avila, a retired supervisory special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations.
Avila was shot several times in an ambush by a drug cartel while on assignment in Mexico. He has written the book, Agent Under Fire: A Murder and a Manifesto. He says agents he has spoken to on the border are already preparing for an increase in migrants coming from Central America after Joe Biden takes office.
Apprehensions along the border increased four-fold from April to November.
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Avila says migrants and traffickers will look for a return to policies enacted during the Obama Administration. In late December, President-elect Joe Biden said he would begin rolling back some of Donald Trump's policies on the border. He said the process would likely take months, saying moving too quickly could result in "a new crisis."
"We will see changes under the Biden Administration. I, personally, think they're not going to be as drastic," Avila says. "They're going to realize things like stopping construction of the wall are not going to benefit the United States. I think we should focus on what's going to benefit the U.S."
December 29, a bridge between El Paso and Juarez was blocked by Cuban migrants seeking asylum who were upset about waiting in Mexico.
"We saw 400 Cuban individuals come through a port of entry in El Paso and try to storm a port of entry chanting, 'Biden, Biden, Biden' because they think it'll be an open-door policy," Avila says. "They already are prepared on both the Border Patrol side and the ICE side."
Avila says the Texas legislature's session beginning Tuesday could lead to action to try to slow down illegal immigration, the drug trade and human trafficking. The organization, New Friends New Life, estimates 400 teens are trafficked in North Texas each night.
Avila says the legislature could also look at options to slow the spread of COVID-19 across the border from Juarez to El Paso. He says the state should consider how many people are crossing the border with COVID-19 and overwhelming hospitals in the area.
"I think the focus and acknowledgement that exists from the Texas legislature and local governments along the border would be a right step forward," Avila says.
Tuesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services says hospitals in the El Paso area had 345 COVID-19 patients using 17.39% of capacity.