Border double-header is political theater
It was a race to the border, with one candidate landing in Brownsville and the other about 300 miles northwest in Eagle Pass.
It was a political doubleheader, a November showdown on the last day of February as Texas voters were slowly streaming to the polls for early voting that ends today for Super Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primaries.
On Tuesday, polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
What we saw Thursday on the border, at least in the early hours, was more stunt than substance. Over the next few days, pundits will debate who won, if a victor becomes apparent.
But it was clear from the start that Thursday’s dueling border visits were the start of the presidential campaign, more political theater starring a president whose reelection won’t be easy and a former president fighting to get back to the White House and outrun his legal problems.
Former President Donald Trump landed in Del Rio and made impromptu comments that promised the largest deportation effort in U.S. history if elected. He then traveled to Eagle Pass, where Gov. Greg Abbott continues his long-running political showdown in which he plays president of a new Texas republic.
Politicians of all stripes find the border an easy place to politick.
President Joe Biden made the trip to Brownsville, which often records some of the lowest numbers for illegal crossings and where residents have said it isn’t facing a border crisis.
Early Thursday, reports surfaced that he was considering a sweeping executive action that will restrict asylum seekers at the U.s.-mexico border if such refugees crossed illegally.
Biden’s visit came after Republicans in Washington blocked a bipartisan border bill he endorsed. They did so at the behest of Trump, who frankly needs a divided nation to hear about a chaotic, dangerous border to make his political return.
The bipartisan bill brought a modicum of hope for increased funding for agents, not just the enforcement kind, but included a provision giving authority to the president to shut down the border when he sees fit. Trump seems to have far more pressing business than a visit to the border. He’s facing overlapping trials involving a range of personal, business and political accusations, all seemingly leading to disaster over keeping sensitive documents, longstanding business practices and a massive settlement reached in his sex-assault conviction.
Still, Trump’s border visit was scripted long ago. In the past, the border has equated to chaos, danger and violence for Trump, who has used xenophobic language echoed by Texas Republican leaders, white nationalists who caravanned to the border recently as well as mass shooters who’ve evoked “invasions” when carrying out their crime sprees.
Both camps sought to outmaneuver one another, each angling for support from their respective bases.
Frankly, neither party and no one in Congress, in fact, has done enough to address real border issues, including streamlining legal immigration so it doesn’t take two decades to migrate legally.
As a political class, Washington fails on so many fronts, including making the amnesty process clear and efficient. Too little is done to facilitate crossborder traffic and trade that allows border families to visit one another and shop in each other’s towns, to travel back and forth with more ease for school, family events and business.
It means better equipping agencies at ports of entry and between those ports while setting high bars for professional conduct among agents.
The dueling Biden-trump visits set the stage for the wedge issue of wedge issues in a presidential election year: immigration. It’s an easy way to divide and conquer, to appeal to voters’ worst instincts.
Trump began his 2016 campaign the same way, with a vicious attack on Mexican immigrants, describing them as rapists, drug smugglers and criminals.
“Some, I assume, are good people,” he added.
The worst of it is that U.S. voters may learn little about the border in the process. Few will see ordinary life on the border, the safety the great majority of border residents enjoy, the cultural events, the ordinary workings of communities.
They’ll never visit that border, or Mexico, or even get to South Padre Island, where so many Mexicans vacation.
I’m not sure that even Biden’s visit ultimately will be good for the border.
It may be more beneficial to his campaign than the border itself.
It’s a presidential year. That’s all this is.
The next seven months could spell anguish as far-right white nationalists stir violent rhetoric around border issues. That can lead to no good end, especially as Texas attempted to institute an anti-latino show-me-your-papers law, or SB4, which was blocked by a federal court in Austin on Thursday.
The law may not be dead in its attempt to turn all law enforcement officers into immigration agents, resulting in racial profiling and targeting mixed-status families especially.
Neither visit may advance the overwhelming need to update the nation’s immigration laws, make legal migration more efficient, welcome needed workers, maintain a humanitarian asylum system and get more agents hired, not just on the enforcement side.
Politicians often get the border all wrong, a lot of times intentionally and for political gain.
For them, it’s all show. We’ll have to brace for more of it because it’s only March.