US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump head to the US-Mexico border on Thursday, focusing attention on the ongoing irregular migration of tens of thousands of people to the United States.
Illegal migration is a controversial issue that will surely be the center of debate in the national elections in November.
Biden and Trump have been arguing over immigration rules remotely at campaign rallies in different states, each blaming the other for the influx of immigrants.
But on Thursday they will be about 500 kilometers (311 miles) apart from each other: Biden will head to Brownsville, Texas, to meet with U.S. Border Patrol agents, law enforcement officials and local leaders, and Trump will head to Eagle Pass, Texas, one of the main entry points for immigrants.
Both Trump and Biden have tried to claim that he is, or will be, the toughest CEO on immigration control during the new presidential term that begins next January.
Trump, in his successful run for president in 2016, claimed he would build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. Part of it was built during his presidency, but none of it was paid for by Mexico.
At one point, he sanctioned the separation of parents from their children when they attempted to enter the United States, but in the face of an outcry that followed, he abandoned the effort.
In his successful 2020 campaign against Trump, Biden said he would adopt more humane immigration policies, but now, with thousands of migrants arriving at the border each week, he has been forced to adopt stricter controls.
Biden said he would support a bipartisan Senate proposal for new immigration rules, but the legislation was doomed when Trump said it was not strict enough. Any Republicans who were initially inclined to support it quickly backed away from the measure, at Trump’s urging.
Now, Biden says he can sign an executive order on immigration, but an executive order does not have the same force of law as legislation passed by Congress and would almost certainly be challenged in lawsuits by pro-immigration groups.
At the same time, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, although he helped defeat the bipartisan immigration plan, has demanded that immigration controls be added to a spending bill that Biden wants to pass, which includes 60,000 millions of dollars in new aid for Ukraine’s fight against Russia two years after the invasion.
Trump is close to securing the Republican presidential nomination for the third consecutive election cycle and has directed his attacks at Biden, with a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showing that immigration is the top concern for many voters and that Biden is vulnerable on the issue.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s immigration chief, alleging that he left the border in chaos and ignored existing immigration restrictions. However, since Democrats control the Senate, his conviction and removal from office are highly unlikely. Trump, for his part, will head to Eagle Pass, Texas, about 325 miles from Brownsville, another hot spot in the confrontation between states and federal authorities over border security, according to another person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue.
The fact that Biden is visiting the border on the same day as the former Republican president “shows how big of a problem this is for him,” a Trump aide said.
A White House official said Biden’s visit to Texas would reiterate calls for congressional Republicans to provide the funding needed to hire additional U.S. Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers and fentanyl detection technology. .
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