Biden finds GOP criticism at border
Gov. Abbott blames immigration ‘chaos’ on administration
EL PASO, Texas — President Joe Biden walked a muddy stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border and inspected a busy port of entry Sunday on his first trip to the region after two years in office, a visit shadowed by the fraught politics of immigration as Republicans try to blame him for the record numbers of migrants crossing into the country.
At his first stop, Biden observed as border officers in El Paso demonstrated how they search vehicles for drugs, money and other contraband. Next, he traveled to a dusty street with abandoned buildings and a small playground. Near the street was a metal border fence that separated the U.S. city from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Biden walked slowly along the border wall, initially joined by two Border Patrol agents.
In a sign of the deep tensions over immigration, Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott handed Biden a letter upon his arrival in the state that said the “chaos” at the border was a “direct result” of the president’s failure to enforce federal laws.
Biden later took the letter out of his jacket pocket, telling reporters, “I haven’t read it yet.”
Asked what he’s learned by seeing the border firsthand and speaking with the officers who work along it, Biden said: “They need a lot of resources. We’re going to get it for them.”
Immigration for years has been a point of conflict, exposing the dysfunction of the U.S. system as well as the turmoil within migrants’ home countries that has pushed many to flee. Administration officials have tried to counter GOP criticism by saying Congress should work with them to increase border security funding and overhaul immigration policy.
Biden spent a few hours in the city, which is the biggest corridor for illegal
The Roland Park Community Foundation, a nonprofit subset of the Roland Park Civic League, will oversee the purchase of the 20 acres.
The foundation has previously planted trees along Roland Avenue and maintained the neighborhood’s curious system of public walking paths that meander around this 1890 garden suburb, designed in part by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architects.
Negotiations for the projected sale have stretched over decades as the club considered its land downsizing options, including an unpopular 2008 plan to sell the tract of land to a planned retirement community.
The Baltimore Country Club will retain 12 acres, largely along Club Road. Its 1932 clubhouse remains a functioning hospitality center with duckpin bowling and squash courts. Members golf on a separate campus called Five Farms in Baltimore County, which the club established in 1926.
“The Roland Park Company, which developed the area, constructed Maryland’s first 18-hole golf course, and established three churches, a firehouse, a central stable and a small group of retail shops as part of a 550-acre tract formerly known as Oakland,” said a 1998 history of the country club. The course had an estimated 100 sheep to keep its turf playable.
Just months after the club joined the USGA on March 31, 1898, the golf association awarded it the 1899 U.S. Open. The winner was a native of Scotland, Willie Smith, who won by 11 shots and established a record broken more than a century later by Tiger Woods.
The tract was enlarged in 1903 when the club bought the
old Mount Washington Cricket Club and constructed four grass tennis courts. A club champion was Baltimore banker Charles “Chuck” Garland, who won the 1920 doubles title at Wimbledon with Dick Williams, a survivor of the Titanic sinking.
“Over time the quality of the grass tennis courts gained the level of recognition the golf course had enjoyed . ... Not long after joining the National Lawn Tennis Association in 1904, the Club hosted the first in a long series of qualifying matches for Davis Cup hopefuls. The grass courts were then the only ones south of the MasonDixon line and still considered among the finest in the country,” the club history said.
In 1969, the club staged what it called the first and last professional tennis championship at Roland Park. About 1,200 people watched Pancho Gonzales defeat Roy Emerson in the first round.
“On the women’s side Billie Jean King advanced to the finals by beating [Ann Haydon Jones] in a match marred by temper tantrums,” the club history said. Rosemary Casals defeated King in the finals, the club’s history said.
“In what many spectators described as the best tennis match
they had ever seen, 32-year-old Rod Laver, the number one ranked player in the world, won the threehour final men’s match against Pancho Gonzales. One week later Rod went to Forest Hills and won the U.S. Open,” the history said.
A decision to reduce the club’s original land holdings is not new. On Jan. 14, 1960, the club’s board approved the sale of land that stretched across Falls Road’s west side. The city of Baltimore bought 37 ½ acres for the Jones Falls Expressway, as well as for Baltimore Polytechnic and Western high schools. The Rouse Co. subsequently developed the remaining 65 acres as its Village of Cross Keys.
In October 1941, The Sun reported that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (the former King Edward VIII and his wife, Baltimore’s Wallis Warfield) visited the club for a reception. The news account said Metropolitan Opera diva Rosa Ponselle sang “Home Sweet Home” in honor of the duchess and “God Save the King” for the duke. Ponselle stood on a porch so her unamplified voice could be heard over the golf course.
During World War II, the grounds became a small farm. There were vegetable gardens and chicken coops.