President Biden and Donald Trump will make dueling trips to the US-Mexico border on Thursday, as both candidates try to turn the nation's broken immigration system to their political advantage in an expected campaign rematch this year. Biden will travel to Brownsville, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, an area that often sees large numbers of border crossings, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. He will meet border agents and discuss the need for bipartisan legislation. It would be Biden's second visit to the border as president, the AP reports. He traveled to El Paso in January last year.
Trump, for his part, will head to Eagle Pass, Texas, about 325 miles away from Brownsville, another hotspot in the state-federal clash over border security, according to three people who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans. The trips underscore immigration's central importance in the 2024 presidential race, for Republicans and increasingly for Democrats, particularly after congressional talks on a deal to rein in illegal migration collapsed.
Trump's campaign says Biden's plan to visit the border is a sign that the president is on the defensive over immigration and that the issue is a problem for his reelection effort. Trump's campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Biden was chasing Trump and is responsible for the "worst immigration crisis in history." The White House announcement came after Trump's planned trip had been reported. Biden's camp says it's House Republicans who are on the defensive, after Trump flatly said he told GOP legislators to tank the bill that would have funded border agents and other Homeland Security authorities. (More US-Mexico border stories.)
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