Mayor of a Democratic border town in Texas criticizes White House for exclusion

The Democratic mayor of a Texas border town said he will not be attending President Joe Biden’s executive order signing in Washington after the White House called to tell him that he was not invited.

Mayor Rolando Salinas of Eagle Pass, Texas, has been an outspoken critic of the Biden administration as the leader of a small border town that has been at the epicenter of the illegal immigration crisis that began in early 2021.

“I received a call from the White House. It wasn’t an invitation — just to let me know that they were making an announcement tomorrow,” Salinas said in an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner on Monday. “Did they invite me? No. … I was outspoken against the White House when we were getting slammed [with illegal immigration].”

Other Texas mayors, Ramiro Garza of Edinburg, John Cowen Jr. of Brownsville, and Oscar Leeser of El Paso, all confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Monday that they had been personally invited to Washington for the executive order-signing Tuesday.

“We are appreciative of the funding we have received from the federal government so that our efforts don’t fall on the backs of El Paso taxpayers,” Leeser said in a statement. “I look forward to hearing more about the President’s plan on Tuesday.”

However, Salinas dismissed the Tuesday event as nothing more than a last-ditch effort to save face ahead of the election on the No. 1 issue to U.S. voters: immigration.

“It’s good this is going into place, but is it politically driven five months before the election? I think so,” Salinas said.

The Democratic mayor, who is a lawyer, questioned the legal ground for Biden’s executive action given that for more than three years, the White House and Department of Homeland Security have each maintained that only Congress can address “broken” immigration laws, not the executive branch of government.

“If it was that quick and easy to issue an executive order, why not do it in December when we were getting swamped with 3[,000]-4,000 people a day? It’s hard for me to forget that,” Salinas said. “As much as I want to support [Biden] — and by no means am I a Republican — but he’s been saying that Congress does it, and now you’re doing something about it without Congress. Why couldn’t he do it before? One-hundred percent, it’s politically driven.”

The White House is expected to announce an executive order Tuesday that effectively shuts down the U.S.-Mexico border to illegal immigration. Under the Biden administration, nearly 10 million non-U.S. citizens have been encountered attempting to enter the United States.

The White House has not yet publicly disclosed details of the order, but it is expected to resemble a Senate proposal that House Republicans came out against earlier this year.

The order would affect adult immigrants who cross the border and seek asylum. The changes are expected to be in line with limitations that were floated earlier this year in a Senate legislative package that ultimately failed to gain Republican support.

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It could limit the number of immigrants who seek asylum at the ports of entry, though limitations on immigrants who cross between the ports remain unclear.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.