Biden, Trump head to border for dueling visits on Thursday
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are both traveling to Texas border towns Thursday, creating an unusual spectacle of dueling visits in which the prospective 2024 presidential rivals are expected to vociferously blame each other for chaos at the border.
Biden will visit Brownsville, making his second trip to the border since becoming president. His trip is part of a recent effort to take initiative on the issue of illegal immigration, which polls suggest has been politically damaging for him.
Trump, the leading Republican presidential contender, will visit Eagle Pass, a city that has become a symbol of Republican defiance against Biden’s handling of immigration. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, seized a park in Eagle Pass earlier this year, shutting out U.S. Border Patrol agents who had long used it as a staging point.
Biden’s visit underscores his political vulnerability after enduring sustained Republican attacks over record levels of migrants at the border. Biden recently embraced a tough bipartisan Senate proposal on immigration, saying he would use its provisions to shut down the border if crossings reached a certain level.
Republicans, who had demanded that border enforcement measures be added to a foreign aid package, blocked the measure after opposition from Trump, who said he feared its passage would help Biden address a political liability.
Frustrated by Congress’s inaction, Biden has been considering executive actions that could limit unauthorized migration and restrict the asylum process, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
It is not clear if Biden’s border visit — along with his potential executive actions and newly fiery rhetoric — can change the political dynamic on immigration. But the White House hopes a tougher stance can at a minimum blunt Republicans’ advantage on the issue.
A White House official said Biden on Thursday will “discuss the urgent need to pass the Senate bipartisan border security agreement” and “reiterate his calls for congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and to provide the funding needed for additional U.S. Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers” and other resources.
The president also will meet Thursday with Border Patrol agents, law enforcement officials and local political leaders, the official said. The Senate border compromise would have funded the hiring of thousands of Border Patrol and asylum officers, as well as increased detention capacity.
Trump and other Republicans have made it clear they will resist any effort by Biden to deflect the political damage caused by periodic scenes of chaos at the border over the past three years.
In a statement Monday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt attacked Biden for his border visit, saying he “had three years to visit the border and fix the crisis he created” and suggesting the president was only traveling there for political reasons.
“Now Biden’s handlers are sending him there on the same day as President Trump’s publicly reported trip, not because they actually want to solve the problem, but because they know Biden is losing terribly,” Leavitt said. “Biden’s last-minute, insincere attempt to chase President Trump to the border won’t cut it — Americans know Biden is single-handedly responsible for the worst immigration crisis in history and the ensuing Biden Migrant Crime Crisis affecting every community in our Country.”
The president’s actions, less than a month after he said he had “done all I can do” to secure the border unilaterally, reflect how the surge in migration continues to vex his administration. Biden in recent weeks has signaled a new willingness to take aggressive actions that have long been anathema to many Democrats.
Administration officials said last week that no final decisions had been made on possible executive actions and that it remained possible Biden ultimately would not take such measures.
In December, record numbers of migrants surged to the border, though illegal border crossings have fallen 50% since then.
Trump, who attracted support for his first presidential run in 2016 in part with his harsh rhetoric on immigration, including a promise to build a border wall, is now seeking to put the issue at the center of his current campaign as well.
The former president often has used dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants, suggesting they have launched an “invasion” of the United States and accusing them of “poisoning the blood of the country,” language that has drawn comparisons with Nazi rhetoric.