Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border together this week as part of “their continued collaboration to secure the border and prosecute offenders,” a spokesperson for Kelly told The Daily Beast.
This will be their first joint visit to the border, according to DHS spokesperson David Lapan, and they will make two stops: one in El Paso, Texas, and another in San Diego, California. The visit will be Sessions’ second trip in as many weeks; on April 11, he spoke to Customs and Border Protection officials in Nogales, Arizona after touring the border area with them. The attorney general has made immigration enforcement a central priority, and announced last week that he is directing U.S. attorneys to prioritize prosecutions of certain people who illegally re-enter the U.S. after being deported. That announcement seemed to make a rapid impact: One migrant who spoke to The Daily Beast the day after Sessions’ comments cited the possibility of spending years in federal prison as a reason he was reconsidering plans to enter the U.S. illegally.
—Betsy Woodruff
