President Biden to visit southern border on the same day as Donald Trump
WASHINGTON ? President Joe Biden plans to make a rare visit to the southern border Thursday ? the same day former President Donald Trump plans his own border stop ? to call Republicans out for blocking border legislation.
Biden will visit Brownsville, Texas, a White House official said, to meet with Border Patrol agents, law enforcement officials and local leaders. Trump, the front-runner to win the Republican nomination, had already scheduled a visit Thursday to Eagle Pass, Texas, about 325 miles away from Brownsville.
Biden's trip ? the second to the border of his presidency ? comes as record migration at the U.S.-Mexico border remains one his biggest election liabilities.
But in a major political shift, Biden has embraced tougher rhetoric on the border and blamed congressional Republicans for inaction after they killed legislation this month ? at Trump's urging ? that would have created some of the most aggressive border restrictions in years.
It's an attempt to flip the script ahead of the 2024 presidential election by turning an issue that has historically hurt Democrats into a Biden campaign win.
"Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends," Biden said after Republicans blocked the border bill from getting a Senate vote.
Biden's only other visit to the southern border came in January 2023, when he stopped in El Paso, Texas, en route to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador about stemming migration.
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign's national press secretary, slammed Biden's visit in a statement, saying his "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," Leavitt said.
During Biden's visit Thursday, the president will discuss "the urgent need" to pass the border security legislation, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
"He will 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, fentanyl detection technology and more," Jean-Pierre said.
With the border legislation stalled, Biden is considering executive action under federal immigration powers once used by Trump to achieve some of the policies in the legislation, risking a backlash from progressives and immigration advocates.
The border legislation, which was negotiated by a team of Democratic and Republican senators, would have given the Biden administration the power to shut down the border to migrants crossing illegally when daily crossings exceed a daily average of 4,000 in any one-week period.
And if migrant border encounters surpass an average of 5,000 a day ? a threshold now met ? the Department of Homeland Security would have been required to close the border to migrants seeking to cross without authorization between ports of entry.
The Associated Press reported Biden is exploring executive action under Section 212(f) of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act to achieve similar restrictions on asylum-seekers trying to enter the U.S. illegally.
Trump cited the same power in 2018 to stop accepting asylum-seekers at the border ? action later blocked in the courts ? and to ban the entry of people from certain Muslim-majority nations.
Jean-Pierre declined to say whether Biden will be announcing any new policies during the trip but said "no executive action" can duplicate the bipartisan border bill.
"I don't have a reaction to the former president," Jean-Pierre said when asked about Trump's dueling visit. "Not going to speak to his schedule."
Even before any executive action is taken, progressive Democrats are pushing back, underscoring the delicate line Biden must walk as he navigates the border crisis in an election year.
The House Congressional Hispanic Caucus has said its members oppose unilateral attempts by the White House to overhaul the asylum system.
Republicans, who for years have hammered Democrats as soft on border security, are overwhelmingly viewed more favorably on the border. An NBC poll this month found more voters view Trump, by 57%-22%, as the better candidate than Biden to secure the border and control immigration.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden and Trump to both visit US-Mexico border the same day
