President Joe Biden said there was no need for him to visit the southern border despite the migrant situation that has existed since he took office.
Republicans have criticized Biden for not visiting the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas or Arizona to witness the migrant surge firsthand.
Before embarking on a visit to the Grand Canyon State, Biden was asked whether he planned to visit the border.
"There are more important things going on," Biden told reporters Tuesday on the White House South Lawn, the Washington Examiner reported. "They're going to invest billions of dollars in the new enterprise in the state."
Biden was headed to Phoenix to help Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announce plans for a second microchip facility in the state.
Last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre falsely claimed Biden had been to the southern border while in office.
"He's been there," the press secretary said. "He's been to the border. And since he took office."
According to One America News Network, travel logs show that Biden has never visited the border during his time in office.
On Monday, Jean-Pierre was asked why Biden was not planning to spend time at the border while in Arizona.
"Let's have a bipartisan agreement on immigration, instead of doing political stunts, instead of doing what they're doing: going to the border, not actually coming up with any real ideas about that," she said during the White House press briefing.
"He's going to go to Arizona to talk about an important initiative that's going to change Americans' lives, specifically in Arizona."
TSMC planned to announce that it was increasing its commitment from $12 billion to $40 billion, one of the country's largest foreign direct investments.
"He's [Biden] going to actually focus on an issue, a bipartisan issue that was voted in Congress, the CHIPS and Science Act," Jean-Pierre said, "something that is going to deliver for the people in Arizona, creating jobs and making people's lives better, and making sure that we are bringing manufacturing back into the U.S."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics showed that 230,678 migrant encounters occurred during October.
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