Security concerns mount as Biden’s Northern Ireland visit nears

President Joe Biden’s trip to Northern Ireland this week has been beset by security concerns amid the re-heightening of terrorism threat levels and news that authorities had uncovered a bomb plot aimed at upending the visit.

The Good Friday Agreement, a historic peace treaty that put an end to years of violence between Ireland and Northern Ireland, is the focus of the president’s’s visit. Although they share a boundary that is no longer militarized, Northern Ireland and Ireland are both members of the United Kingdom and the European Union, respectively. However, the situation has gotten vulnerable in recent years as post-Brexit issues have led to political impasse.

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On Tuesday, Biden, who has long bragged about having European ancestry, may make his first trip to Belfast, the nation’s’s budget. He will stay for one and a half days, but only one public event — a speaking engagement at Ulster University honoring the opening of the university’s’s Belfast campus — will he attend. Rishi Sunak, the chief secretary of the UK, and Joe Kennedy III, who is the US special envoy for Northern Ireland, may join the president there.

He will speak with other market leaders and connect with NI social gatherings on Wednesday before departing for the Republic of Ireland that afternoon. He has a packed program and will remain there for three years.

The north’s’s reportedly passive parliament, Stormont, which has been impassed for more than a year due to post-Brexit political unrest, will not be visited by Biden during his visit to Northern Ireland. The White House declined the president’s’s invitation to talk before the appearance, citing logistical issues.

A ship of protection vehicles from the president’s’s parade were flown into Belfast International Airport by the US Air Force this next Wednesday as a sign that preparations were being made for Biden. Agents of the Secret Service have also been on the ground getting ready for the president to arrive.

According to Chris Todd, assistant chief officer of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the visit will necessitate a protection operation that hasn’t been seen in the northern since the G8 Summit it in 2013.

Given the risks, it is not absolutely amazing that Biden spent less time in Northern Ireland despite the protection measures.

According to a report released on Sunday, the PSNI searched the town of Londonberry next weekend for bomb components out of concern for an attack by an insurgent republican group. According to the report,” the belief is that the New IRA was planning some sort of attack to coincide with Biden’s’s visit ,” possibly a mortar attack.

Republicans in Northern Ireland support UK democracy, while supporters want to stay in the country.

Late last month, as the 25th anniversary drew near, officials increased the terror threat level from” substantial” to” severe.” When questioned about this shortly after it occurred, Biden responded that he would not be discouraged from visiting Northern Ireland by telling investigators,” No, they didn’t keep me out.”

The threat level group had been” severe” for the previous 12 years, only being downgraded for a brief period beginning in 2022, the White House noted that day.

The Washington Examiner asked for comment on security procedures, but a Secret Service spokesperson did not respond right away.

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When questioned about Biden’s’s brief visit this year, Chris Heaton-Harris, the secretary of state for the Northern Ireland Assembly and the de facto leader of the north, gave it a positive spin.

He said,” I think you should welcome President Biden and thank him for coming. I’m’m sure he also has other important things on his schedule to deal with, and I think part of his trip is actually to visit family and relatives in Ireland.” It is not at all a rebuff. He is coming to Northern Ireland, and I have no doubt that he will be delighted with the advancements that have been made there over the past 25 years.