WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ohio lawmakers have mixed reviews of President Joe Biden’s recent trip to the United States-Mexico border.

What You Need To Know

  • Following President Biden’s visit to the southern border, Ohio lawmakers weighed in on his handling of the migrant crisis

  • Republicans called the stop theater, despite criticizing Biden for months for not making the trip

  • Democrats defend the president’s approach to immigration policy and want Republicans to negotiate bipartisan reform
  • Spectrum News spoke with Ohio Representatives Max Miller (R), Warren Davidson (R), and Joyce Beatty (D) 

When Biden visited last week — in a trip Republicans long demanded he do — former Donald Trump aide-turned-Ohio Congressman Max Miller was not impressed.

“I was the former director of advance for President Trump. I know how these things operate and the optic that they sought out,” Miller, R-Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, told Spectrum News. “They brought him to a location where there wasn’t a lot of influx of illegal immigration, and they knew that. It was more of an optic.”

Biden met with border officers in El Paso and walked along a section of metal fencing, but he did not meet with any migrants.

His first visit to the border as president came after the federal government detained a record 2.3 million people who tried to cross illegally into the U.S. last year.

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio’s 8th Congressional District, said he wasn’t worried about Biden literally going to the border, but he is concerned about the president’s border policies.

“He didn’t need to go to the border to know how his policies are working,” Davidson told Spectrum News. “He designed them that way on purpose. This was all theater. I don’t think he’s sincere in even the slightest way about actually reversing course on his policies.”

Biden has announced a new policy allowing a total of 30,000 migrants into the U.S. each month from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, if they follow a certain process. At the same time, the U.S. is turning away all others who arrive illegally.

But Republicans now say they want Biden to focus more on the growing drug problem in America, which they say is connected to border security because cartels haul drugs like fentanyl into the U.S.

The Justice Department announced last fall more than four million deadly dosages of fentanyl were seized in Ohio alone, many coming from Mexico.

“We need to do a better job of taking care of the American people more so than anyone else that’s not within this country, and I will always stand by that,” Miller said.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio’s 3rd Congressional District, said Biden administration officials are consistently visiting the border.

Beatty and other Democrats say only legislative solutions can truly address the border crisis, but that Republicans have not been willing to negotiate.

“When we have put up immigration reform, when we have put up issues about how we should deal with the issues there, I didn’t see the Republicans coming in a bipartisan fashion,” Beatty told Spectrum News. “I didn’t see them coming to support any of the issues or ideas that we put forth.”

Now that Republicans control the U.S. House, they are expected to investigate the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border.

The Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio’s 4th Congressional District, could even pursue impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.