El Paso Mayor wanted President Biden to see migrant crisis ‘through my eyes’

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- President Joe Biden's visit to El Paso Sunday lasted more than an hour than initially scheduled in part because of an unplanned one-on-one meeting with El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser.

Mayor Leeser requested a chance to speak with him individually as President Biden stepped foot off Air Force One at the El Paso International Airport.

"I said, 'Mr. President, I have a book that I put together. I don't know what part of the schedule would really fit, but I really want to sit down with you and be able to go over this with you,'" Leeser told ABC-7 during an exclusive interview Thursday.

Mayor Leeser says the president said 'absolutely.'

The book was a binder Leeser and his staff put together during the overnight hours once they were informed of the president's visit to El Paso. It contained 62 photos Leeser took on his phone over the course of weeks during the height of the latest migrant surge.

"I go out, whether it's 1 o'clock at night, 10 o'clock at night, 10 o'clock in the morning, I go out almost every day," Leeser said.

Those unannounced visits were sometimes to the border wall, downtown El Paso where migrants were sleeping on the streets and the El Paso International Airport.

Leeser says he took hundreds of photos to document what he was seeing.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted in the hours prior to Air Force One landing in El Paso that President Biden's visit was "to a sanitized version of El Paso."

The number of migrants crossing was on the decline, and Leeser says he wanted the president to get the full picture.

"The important part was I wanted the president to see what we have been dealing with, where the crisis was."

Leeser says he got his one-on-one opportunity after the president met with CBP officers at the Bridge of the Americas, which was on the original schedule. They went in a separate room to review the photos.

Leeser says a photo of a little girl on the other side of the wall is what resonated the most with the president.

"I said, 'Mr. President, can you see that? That little girl right there.' And he sat there and he goes, 'You're right, that breaks my heart.'"

Leeser says the one-on-one meeting was long enough to go through all the photos in the book.

"I wanted him to see what we're seeing day in, day out. There was no better way than him to see it through my eyes."

Using those images as a driving force, he says he delivered this primary message to the president: "I told the president the immigration process is broken. You can continue to give us money because you can't put it on the back of the local taxpayers, but again, it's only a band-aid."

The next day, Leeser says he gave the same book of photos to each of the eight senators who visited El Paso.