President Donald Trump brought his insistent push for a hardened border with Mexico to Calexico Friday, pointing to an “absolute emergency” on the international boundary and warning that the asylum system drawing a surge of migrants to the U.S. was “full.” “We can’t take anymore, folks,” Trump told a gathering of Border Patrol agents, federal officials, lawmakers and reporters gathered for a roundtable discussion at the Border Patrol station. One after another during the visit, a select group of local Border Patrol agents, immigration officials, and sheriffs from around the West weighed in on their experiences patrolling the border and beyond — from drug smugglers and human traffickers to asylum-seeking families to bodies abandoned in the desert. “We are not prepared to deal with the amount of people, families, children and now organized caravans coming across our border today,” said El Centro’s Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez. “Our resources are extremely strained. Our agents are being stretched in so many different directions.” She and others repeatedly thanked the president for building two miles of replacement fencing in the desert town recently, even presenting Trump with a chunk of steel from the project as a memento. Trump said he would display it in the Oval Office. Advertisement The see-through bollard fencing, at 30 feet high, was held up as the star of the visit. After the roundtable, Trump headed for the border to get a first-hand look at the barrier — “the first section of President Trump’s border wall,” according to an official plaque welded to it. The replacement fencing had been planned by previous administrations but funded under Trump’s first year in office and completed late last year. “It looks great,” said Trump, whose first visit to the California border was one year ago to view wall prototypes in Otay Mesa. “It’s better and much more effective than the previous wall. It’s pretty sharp up top, too. If you want to climb that you deserve whatever you can get.” Chavez said that most of the sector’s 58 miles of border barrier are constructed of inferior Vietnam-era landing mat that is ineffective at keeping out intrepid crossers. She said construction on an additional 11 miles is expected to begin in June. With no funding for his envisioned wall, Trump has taken to declaring a national emergency to secure the money. “We expect to have close to 400 miles done within about two years,” he said. He added that it would take a “Mount Everest climber” to cross once the wall is complete. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said he started his career in the El Centro sector and admonished Democrats who are blocking efforts to construct the wall. “For those congressmen who want to be obstructionists, if you don’t want to be part of the solution, at least get out of our way, let your administration do its work.” The visit comes as record numbers of asylum-seeking families from Central America are crossing into the U.S., with Texas’s Rio Grande sector seeing the heaviest traffic. In February, Border Patrol apprehended 66,450 migrants along the southwest border; just over half of them were part of a family unit, according to the agency. The El Centro sector, which includes Calexico, accounted for 3,319 of those arrests, with a third coming as part of a family. While March apprehension tallies aren’t to be released until Monday, officials have projected the mark to approach 100,000. To compare, Border Patrol arrested 37,390 last March. As many as 750 U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers across the country have been redeployed to areas most hard hit to help process the families. CBP has warned that the staffing shift will be felt at ports of entry, including at Otay Mesa’s commercial trucking facility where 10 lanes have been reduced to eight indefinitely. Some Border Patrol highway checkpoints have also been shuttered in Texas due to manpower needs. Agent Lucio Gonzalez echoed the message that agents are being pulled away to transport and process arriving families. “That’s 60 agents that can and should be controlling our border,” he told Trump, adding that the sector was operating at 300 agents under the allocated amount. He noted the difficulty of verifying family claims with consulates at the rate people are arriving. The sector chief earlier told the president that in fiscal 2019 alone, agents had discovered 193 “fake families,” or people teaming up with children so they can be released into the community rather than be detained. “We’ll take care of it,” Trump assured Gonzalez. The whirlwind trip — roughly 3 ½ hours from wheels down to wheels up at nearby Naval Air Facility El Centro — punctuated an especially anxious week that began with his threats to close the southern border, then de-escalated with an ultimatum that gives Mexico one year to end the northbound flow of drugs and migrants. Trump pointed to his warning as being effective already. “Mexico has been absolutely terrific for the last four days. They’re apprehending everybody,” he told reporters outside the White House before his take-off to California. “Yesterday they apprehended 1,400 people. The day before was 1,000. And if they apprehend people at their southern border where they don’t have to walk through, that’s a big home run.” Advertisement Trump’s visit to the town of 40,000 residents drew a mix of protest and support. Outside the station, a small crowd of Trump supporters lined the street with their cars, many with American flags flapping in the slight breeze that didn’t do much to stave off the heat of the desert sun. One sign read, “If you build it, they won’t come.” Meanwhile, dozens of protesters gathered downtown, where they marched and chanted “Si se puede” — Yes we can — and “What do we want? Justice!” Nearby, a huge balloon depicting a cartoonish baby Trump flew overhead. The city’s residents were encouraged to wear white signifying the peace of their border community. Suzie Newell, 64, held a small sign with a picture of two hands shaking over a barbed wire fence. The hands are tattooed with the Mexican and American flags. It reads “Two Countries and One community.” A resident of El Centro, a town next to Calexico, she said she came out to oppose closing the border as Trump has threatened to do. “I don’t think he’s thinking about how it’s going to affect both sides,” she said. “It will hurt the economy.” “We have a lot of farm workers who cross the border doing jobs that Americans won’t do,” she added. Newell, who taught as a teacher in Calexico for 24 years, said she didn’t agree with how her border town was being portrayed by Trump. “We don’t have a border problem,” she said. Covered in hearts pinned to her shirt, Frederic Luke, 72, drove all the way from Brawley to demonstrate against Trump and spread a little love in the process. “I didn’t vote for him and I initially gave him a chance,” she said. “But I think he’s incompetent. I’m horrified some people haven’t seen what a fraud he is.” At least two Trump supporters stood by watching for a few minutes: Linda Jung,71, and her husband Keith Wood, 80. “We came to support our wonderful president,” Wood said. The couple said they support a closed border to get Congress to improve immigration laws, Wood said. “If we have to suffer some economic shortcomings, then so be it.” Later, as the demonstration moved near the Calexico airport next to the border fence, Mexicans popped their hands through gaps and took photos. Among then was 49-year-old David Villanueva, who was heading home from work when he started hearing the echoes of chants and people cheering. Asked about the new barrier, topped with concertina wire that has been added in recent months, he looked around. “This thing is massive,” he said. “Feels like a prison wall.” Joe Rivas, 60, a resident of El Centro, who came out to support the president, said the new wall was about safety. “There are too many drugs coming through the country,” he said. Rivas said drugs have taken friends and torn families apart.<doc-sep>Tirzo Rodriguez, a 61-year-old Tijuana resident who crosses the border every day to work, never thought President Donald Trump would actually close the border. “He won’t do it,” Rodriguez said about 6 a.m. Thursday while waiting for a trolley in San Ysidro. “It’s spring break,” he said. “If he closes the border all of those people will be stuck in Mexico.” A few hours later, Trump proved him right. Advertisement The president backtracked on earlier threats to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border this week. Trump told reporters at the White House that he’d instead give Mexico a one-year warning to stop the flow of drugs and migrants into the U.S. before closing the border. Rodriguez, who works as a cook at a Hometown Buffet, is just one of tens of thousands of people who cross the border every day. Other cross-border commuters who joined him Thursday included U.S. citizens living in Tijuana, gardeners in Lemon Grove, housekeepers in downtown hotels, students at San Diego City College, and even groups of elementary school students going on field trips to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. Those commuters help make the Metropolitan Transit System’s Blue Line the busiest in the region. With an average of 1.5 million riders per month, the Blue Line has almost as many passengers as the other two trolley lines combined. Not only would a border closure impact transit ridership, it would also compromise its labor force because hundreds of MTS employees live south of the border, said MTS spokesperson Rob Schupp. “Many of these are bus operators, mechanics, and trolley employees critical to delivering reliable transit services,” Schupp said in a statement. With the threat of a border closure gone — at least for one year — commuters carried on as usual. Although few believed Trump would shut down the border, many acknowledged that a closure would impact their ability to earn a living. Advertisement “It would change my life dramatically,” said Ana Montiel, 27. “I’m a U.S. citizen, I work here. If I can’t cross to where I was born, it would be a tough situation.” Montiel and her family moved to Tijuana after being priced out of San Diego during the Great Recession. She and her younger brother cross the border every day to go to class at San Diego City College. Apart from studying there, Montiel also works as a Spanish tutor on campus. While living in Tijuana, Montiel has met several former San Diego residents. “If you work (in the U.S.) and live in Tijuana your money goes farther,” said Jonathan Vargas. Advertisement Vargas, 20, earns $100 a day working as a gardener in San Diego. If he reigns in spending, that $100 can last him a week, he said. In San Ysidro, it’s not uncommon for most of the workforce of a business to live south of the border, according to Jason Wells, CEO of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce. A border closure — even a partial one — would force many stores to shut down. “You can’t run a business if you’re not sure whether half of your employees are going to show up,” Wells said. Advertisement The impacts of a closure aren’t limited to fewer workers. Those businesses rely on Mexican customers. The Chamber of Commerce has 650 member businesses within 2 miles of the border and, on average, 85 percent of their customers come from Mexico, Wells added. In November, the region caught a glimpse of what a border closure would look like when a group of migrants prompted a five-hour closure by rushing the border fence. That partial closure cost San Ysidro businesses $5.3 million in sales. Experts say the impacts of a border closure wouldn’t be limited to San Ysidro because a majority of cross-border commuters work throughout the county, said Paola Avila, vice president of International Business Affairs for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. Advertisement Businesses operating in the region have the threat of a closure looming over their long-term plans, Avila added. “The threat continues,” she said. “Even if it happens a year from now.”<doc-sep>LOS ANGELES — President Donald Trump returns to California on Friday for a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border and a fundraiser in Los Angeles as the state's Republican Party struggles on many fronts. "The Republican Party has been a bad brand name in California politics for a decade, and I think Donald Trump made it a toxic brand," said Thad Kousser, political science chair at the University of California, San Diego. "The clearest flash point for this is in immigration and also the environment." For one, Republicans lost seven seats in the 2018 congressional midterm elections and the GOP has seen its voter registration decline in historic strongholds of the state, including Orange County — once considered a bastion of conservatism. Also, some Republican House incumbents and challengers in the recent midterms sought to distance themselves from Trump on immigration and offshore oil drilling, among other issues. But the state GOP is plotting a comeback in 2020, even using the Green New Deal against Democrats. "California Republicans are conflicted about Trump," said Dan Schnur, a professor of political communications at the University of Southern California and a former longtime GOP strategist who is now an independent. "He still has a very strong and very committed core base of support here. But a lot of elected officeholders are nervous about him because he's so unpopular here." A poll conducted last month by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, showed only 29 percent of California adults approve of Trump's job performance as president. Yet among California Republicans, the PPIC polling showed Trump enjoys about 75 percent support. That said, just 27 percent of independents and a mere 7 percent of Democrats approve of how the GOP president is handling his job. "We support the president and are glad he's coming to Los Angeles," said Eric Early, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Republican Party. "We have lots of policies of the president's that we support." Still, the anti-Trump vote in 2018 also may have helped Democrats secure a supermajority in both houses of the state Legislature. As of Feb. 10, only 23.5 percent of California registered voters were Republican, down from 26 percent just before Trump was elected president. Those registered as "no party preference" is 28 percent, surpassing the GOP and second to Democrats' 43 percent. "I don't see a path to the numbers coming back to California until Trump is out of office," said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant who served in the administration of former California GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Stutzman said Trump represents "everything that's opposite" to broaden the party, including being able to reach voters who are younger and more ethnically diverse. On Friday, Trump is expected to be in the LA area for a fundraiser where dinner is $15,000 per person or $50,000 for the chance to get a picture with the president. There's also $150,000 tickets for those with deep pockets to be part of the roundtable at the private event, NBC Los Angeles reported Tuesday. Prior to the fundraiser, Trump is scheduled to visit Calexico, a town about 120 miles east of San Diego to see a new 30-foot-tall section of the border wall. The visit comes after Trump threatened on Twitter to shut down the entire U.S.-Mexico border due to alleged immigration "loopholes" he wants Congress to fix. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1113437257493561344 "Not everybody is happy with everything he does on Twitter, but the actions speak dramatically louder than words," said Shawn Steel, the state's Republican National Committee member. Immigration is a hot-button issue in California that divides the electorate like few others. With a population of nearly 40 million people, California has more than 10 million foreign-born residents — more than any other state. "Most Californians believe that immigrants are a benefit to the state," said Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of the PPIC. "Californians have been against building a wall, and in our latest poll most Californians were opposed to the president calling a national emergency in order to build a wall." Trump has taken a swipe several times as president against California Democratic governors, first Jerry Brown and more recently "grandstanding" Gavin Newsom for asylum shelters and scaling back the state's "so-called Fast Train, which is $Billions over budget & in total disarray." Trump also threatened to cut off funding for wildfire relief in the state. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1104499701016133634 For his part, Newsom has slammed Trump for "manufacturing a crisis and declaring a made-up 'national emergency'" at the border and admonished the president for threatening to cut off wildfire funding. "Disasters and recovery are no time for politics," he said in a tweet. Tweet The Trump administration is suing California over its so-called sanctuary state laws that are designed to protect undocumented immigrants. The Trump administration and California are fighting over other issues, including health care, fracking, climate change and the census citizenship question. All told, there are at least 48 lawsuits filed against the administration by the Democratic-led state. "Regardless of how you feel about the current administration, the reality is that Sacramento must have a cooperative relationship with the federal government," California Assembly Republican Leader Marie Waldron said in a statement to CNBC. "From disaster relief funding to infrastructure projects, we have to work with our federal counterparts and California Democrats' practice of picking fights with the president at every opportunity doesn't help anything."<doc-sep>
President Donald Trump received decidedly mixed responses from San Diego County and state officials Friday as he visited the U.S.-Mexico border in nearby Calexico one week after threatening to close it. Trump backpedaled on the threat this week, instead dangling the threat of tariffs on Mexican products if the country doesn’t stem the flow of drugs coming across the border within a year. Trump threatened tariffs as high as 25 percent on imported items like cars and auto parts. The border shutdown would have frozen a trade relationship that exchanged $612 billion in goods last year. Trump also suggested before leaving for Calexico that the country should do away with its asylum process and immigration judges altogether to halt immigration across the southern border. He doubled-down on the that stance once he arrived at the border. “The asylum laws are broken, they’re totally broken,” Trump said as protesters flew the large “Baby Trump” balloon nearby. “I inherited this stuff and we’re going to get it fixed.” Trump argued that some asylum-seekers are gang members and stated that the country’s new response to asylum claims is that the system is full and it will no longer hear cases. San Diego County GOP Chairman Tony Krvaric welcomed Trump to Southern California with open arms and full-throated support. “San Diego Republicans join President Trump in supporting orderly legal immigration and vetting of refugees while employing an all-of-the-above approach to stop violent criminals, deadly drugs, and human trafficking from entering our country,” Krvaric said. The San Diego-based Southern Border Communities Coalition was not as fawning in its comments on Trump’s visit, referring to it as “trite political theater.” The coalition is composed of 60 organizations in border cities from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, which lies at the southern tip of the state on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. “Trump seems hell-bent on exploiting the misery of families and children seeking asylum at our doors for his own political gain,” said coalition Director Vicki Gaubeca. “This is not who we are as a nation, and does not reflect our values of treating people with dignity, compassion, and fairness.” Near the time Trump left the region, San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob issued a critical statement. The Board of Supervisors, she said, has a long-standing position calling on the federal government to secure the border and stop the flow of illegal traffic. “The board has also gone on record in opposing California’s ‘sanctuary state’ law,” said Jacob, a Republican in her final term. “However, we have a problem with the mishandling of the asylum seekers legally coming into our County, and that’s why we filed a lawsuit this week asking the court to require the feds to reinstate the Safe Release program. The federal government’s abandonment of the program has left San Diego County taxpayers holding the bag, to the tune of $1.3 million and growing.” Trump visited a section of the border barrier that he argues is the first constructed section of his signature wall, but the project was first floated during the Obama administration as far back as 2009 and first received funding during Trump’s first year in the White House. When U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visited the area in October, she had a plaque installed denoting the 2.25-mile section of steel bollard fencing as the “first section of President Trump’s border wall.” The federal government has installed or repaired roughly 82 miles of border fencing, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, who spoke at a border security roundtable with Trump during the visit. By the end of 2020, the Army Corps of Engineers plans to have installed, repaired or replaced roughly 450 miles of bordering fencing and barriers, costing an estimated $8 billion. Trump is visiting the state at a time when he is viewed by many as a toxic brand. He has an approval rating of 29 percent among the state’s adult population, according to a survey taken last month by nonpartisan think tank the Public Policy Institute of California. San Diego County formally filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday afternoon, alleging that the federal government continues to harm the county and stoke a public health crisis by releasing asylum-seeking migrants into the U.S. with little-to-no support network. An International Rescue Committee report released Friday supported the county’s argument after IRC partners and staff went to the border to analyze its current state first-hand.