Illegal immigrants in El Paso, Texas, have been arrested, their camps have been taken down, and some have been sent back to Mexico in the week leading up to President Biden’s first visit to the border during his term. 

El Paso, the epicenter of the border crisis, saw up to 2,500 illegal immigrants crossing the border every day in mid-December. Videos show authorities patrolling and arresting illegal immigrants sleeping on city streets outside a bus station and the Sacred Heart Church shelter, NBC reported. 

“People are saying that if you are out in the streets the Border Patrol will get you and deport you because the President is coming to El Paso and they don’t want to show him the reality of things,” Maria Rodriguez, a Venezuelan who was living in a dumpster for three days, told the New York Post. “I hope we get shelter tonight because it took us a lot of courage to go out of that dumpster after three days…We just don’t want to keep running. All we are asking is for one chance.” 

One Border Patrol agent told The Post that 200 illegal immigrants were sent back to Mexico on Saturday. President Biden is scheduled to visit El Paso Sunday afternoon, much to the dismay of some border patrol agents who say it is too little, too late.

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told Fox News Digital in a recent interview that agents are “beyond frustrated that he allowed this issue to get as bad as it is, he’s not coming to the border of his own accord. He would have done that a long, long time ago.”

Lisa Graybill, vice president of law and policy at the National Immigration Law Center, told NBC News that removing illegal immigrants in front of a church shelter violates Homeland Security policy. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas sent a memo in October 2021 stating that illegal immigrants should not be arrested at shelters like places of worship and courthouses, according to the outlet. 

El Paso being cleaned up as if nothing unusual ever happened there. Just in time for Biden's "visit to the border".

We suggest just landing in Des Moines, Iowa and telling him it's El Paso. He'll never know the difference.

— Border Patrol Union – NBPC (@BPUnion) January 6, 2023

The Border Patrol Union made its stance on the President’s trip known, tweeting on Friday: “El Paso being cleaned up as if nothing unusual ever happened there. Just in time for Biden’s ‘visit to the border’. We suggest just landing in Des Moines, Iowa and telling him it’s El Paso. He’ll never know the difference.” 

In April 2021, Biden said his administration had “gotten control” of the border situation. Then, in September 2021, he said he planned on visiting the southern border “at some point.” Now, some fifteen months later, the President is scheduled to make the trip.

21 months ago, Joe Biden declared victory on the southern border: "We've now gotten control."

Tomorrow, Biden will allegedly stop by the border for the first time in his life to see his disaster in person.pic.twitter.com/UkCBY26fZC

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 7, 2023

Biden announced the stop while unveiling border initiatives, saying, “I know that migration is putting a real strain on the border and on border communities.”

“The actions we’re announcing today will make things better — will make things better but will not fix the border problem completely. There’s more that has to be done,” Biden said Thursday. 

Mexico’s leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador appears to be abandoning his “hugs not bullets” approach to dealing with Mexico’s violent crime problem that is fueled by the country’s notorious drug cartels.

AMLO’s shift in thinking was made apparent this week when surreal images emerged of thousands of Mexican soldiers conducting a large-scale operation to capture Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of notorious Sinaloa drug cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who is also known as “El Chapo.”

The operation was so large in scale because the last time that the Mexican military captured Ovidio Guzmán in 2019, they were forced to let him go after hundreds of heavily armed cartel gunmen threatened to murder families and overrun the soldiers.

AMLO’s initial thinking reflected the thinking of some in the U.S. who believe that the war on drugs is ineffective and who do not want to escalate violent confrontations with criminal organizations.

Raúl Benítez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told The Wall Street Journal that this latest action marks an end to that way of thinking by Mexico’s president.

“López Obrador is leaving behind that stuff about hugs, not bullets,” he said. “It shows that such an anticrime strategy didn’t work and is not viable.”

Ten soldiers were killed during the 3,500-man operation in addition to 19 members of the cartel with 35 soldiers sustaining gunshot injuries. Nearly two dozen cartel members were arrested, and numerous .50-caliber weapons were seized, along with dozens of rifles, and more than two dozen armored vehicles.

A U.S. official told the Journal that while “things have improved … there is still a fair amount of suspicion on both sides.”

Last summer, Infamous Mexican cartel kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, who murdered a U.S. federal agent in 1985, was captured by an elite Mexican military unit after being on the run for nearly a decade.

“Caro Quintero helped a lot, this will help a lot,” the U.S. official said.

Quintero was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, but was let out after 28 years because a judge in Mexico ruled that he should have been tried in a federal court, not a state court.

When Mexican officials attempted to retry the case, Quintero went into hiding and remained on the run for almost 10 years.

With a $20 million price tag on his head from the U.S. government, Quintero reportedly reassembled his drug cartel shortly after being let out of prison.

However, a person who makes fentanyl for the drug cartels told the Journal that this latest major arrest changes nothing.

“There won’t be any more violence if the government doesn’t go any further,” he said. “The cartel will continue the same with minor adjustments.”