Biden and Trump plan to make dueling trips to the US-Mexico border

(Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

Biden and Trump plan to make dueling trips to the US-Mexico border

Mexico and America, immigration and the border

SEUNG MIN KIM, COLLEEN LONG, ZEKE MILLER and JILL COLVIN

February 26, 2024

President

Joe

Biden and former president

Donald

Trump will make dueling trips to the Mexican border in Texas on Thursday after talks in Congress on a deal to curb illegal migration collapsed, according to people familiar with the plans.

The visits underscore the central importance of immigration in the 2024 presidential race, and how much

both

Biden and Trump are trying to use the country’s broken system to their political advantage.

Biden will travel to Brownsville, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, an area that often sees large numbers of border crossings, said three people who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s plans before they were announced.

He will meet with border agents and discuss the need for bipartisan legislation, the people said. It would be his second visit to the border as president. Last January he traveled to El Paso.

Senators reach an agreement on the border policy bill. Now it faces an uphill battle to succeed

Trump, for his part, will go to Eagle Pass, Texas, about 325 miles away

or 520 kilometers

away from Brownsville, another hot spot in the state-federal clash over border security, according to three other people who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.

The number of people crossing the U.S. border illegally has risen for complex reasons, including climate change, war and unrest in other countries, the economy and cartels that see migration as a cash cow.

The administration has linked the border crackdown to expanding legal routes for migrants, aimed at encouraging people to arrive by plane with sponsors, rather than illegally walking to the border. But U.S. policy currently allows migrants to seek asylum regardless of how they arrive. And the numbers of migrants streaming to the U.S.-Mexico border have far exceeded the capacity of an immigration system that has not been substantially updated in recent decades. arrests

too many

Illegal crossings fell by half in January, but reached record highs in December.

Biden has blasted Republicans for abandoning the bipartisan border deal after Trump spoke out against the plan to tighten asylum restrictions and implement daily limits on border crossings. Trump, meanwhile, has stepped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric, suggesting migrants are poisoning the blood of Americans.

Migrant arrests are increasing along the border in California and declining in Texas. Why?

Trump’s campaign says Biden’s plan to visit the border is a sign that the president is defending immigration and that the issue is a problem for his reelection efforts. Biden’s camp says it’s House Republicans who are on the defensive, after Trump bluntly said he told Republican lawmakers to undermine the bill that would have funded border agents and other homeland security authorities. The New York Times first reported on the trip.

As he continues to criticize Republicans for legislative inaction, Biden is considering executive action to help discourage migrants from coming to the US. a president who has wide latitude to block the entry of certain immigrants into the United States if doing so would be detrimental to the national interest.

But without changes in the law, any executive action by the government to crack down on border crossings will likely be challenged in court. The White House has told some lawmakers on Capitol Hill that Biden will not announce an executive order on immigration during his border trip

on

Thursday, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

According to an AP-NORC poll in January, concern about immigration rose to 35% from 27% last year. Most Republicans, 55%, say the government should focus on immigration in 2024, while 22% of Democrats list immigration as a priority. That is 45% and 14% respectively compared to December 2022.

The White House is weighing executive actions at the border with immigration powers used by Trump

Trump is once again making immigration the centerpiece of his campaign, using images of migrants sleeping in police stations and hangars as evidence that Biden’s policies have failed. As a candidate and president, he made regular trips to the border.

During his 2016 campaign, he traveled to Laredo, Texas

,

in July 2015 for a visit that highlighted how his views on immigration helped him win media attention and support from the Republican base. Since leaving office, he has been to the border at least twice, including to get the Texas governor’s approval. Greg Abbott.

The failure of the border bill this month has caused the Department of Homeland Security, which controls the border, to assess its priorities and shift money between its agencies to close gaps. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is considering reducing the number of detention beds from 38,000 to 22,000 and reducing the number of deportation flights. That would mean more migrants being released into the US arriving at the border.

Biden, meanwhile, visited the border only once and did not come into contact with migrants. Instead, he inspected Customs and Border Protection facilities and walked a stretch of border wall. During negotiations over the border bill, he suggested he would close asylum if he won power, a notable shift to the right for Democrats who are increasingly concerned about the same scenes of migrant camps and are asking the administration to speed up work permits. so that families who have arrived can at least look for work.

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