Biden and Trump face off at southern border in dueling visits

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Joe Biden and Donald Trump held dueling visits to the nation’s southern border on Thursday, as immigration ascends to a top concern for Americans and the president seeks to dull his leading 2024 opponent’s political cudgel.

While Biden, donning a baseball cap, was briefed by Border Patrol agents, law enforcement and local leaders on a gravel road in Brownsville, Texas, Trump was stationed over 300 miles away in Eagle Pass, Texas, the site of the state-federal standoff over border security. Trump, whose plans were announced before the White House trip, will also sit for an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity during his drop-in.

The competing appearances set the opening scene for the general election, as both candidates ramp up their attacks and set their sights on the November rematch. And the venue of the showdown is no accident, as Biden and Trump seize on what’s likely to be a top issue in the 2024 race — immigration, with the president emphasizing his recent efforts to solve the problem and blaming Trump for getting in the way, and his predecessor and likely challenger stoking fears and blaming Democrats.

The president’s trip is the culmination of weeks of dialed-up rhetoric and a major strategy shift from the White House, as Biden officials lean into the border issue and look to cast the political blame on Republicans and Trump, who urged GOP members to kill a bipartisan Senate border deal earlier this month.

“The majority of Democrats and Republicans in both Houses support this legislation until someone came along and said don’t do that, it’ll benefit the incumbent … We need to act. It’s time for the speaker and some of my Republican friends in Congress who are blocking this bill to show a little spine,” Biden said, urging Congress to move forward with the bill.

“I understand my predecessor is in Eagle Pass today. So here’s what I would say to Mr. Trump. Instead of playing politics with the issue, instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me. Or I’ll join you in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill,” Biden continued. “We can do it together. You know — and I know — it’s the toughest, most efficient, most effective border security bill this country has ever seen.”

Trump, who spoke minutes before Biden, was less conciliatory.

“The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime,” he said behind a podium in the riverfront park in Eagle Pass that’s become the focal point of the border standoff between the state and the Biden administration. “He’s destroying the country.”

Before his remarks, Biden was driven via motorcade through the tall metal border wall that sits about a half mile from the Rio Grande to the river bank, where he met with a group of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents as a patrol boat floated in the water below. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who House Republicans voted to impeach earlier this month, lingered just over his shoulder.

Peter Flores, the deputy Border Patrol commissioner, told Biden how the migrant surge has forced the local Border Patrol office to bring in additional manpower from other locations. The president shook his head when he was informed the office had already seized 8,000 pounds of fentanyl this year. He also acknowledged the danger agents accept as part of their jobs.

“Thank you,” Biden said from Brownsville, a Rio Grande Valley city that once had the nation’s most trafficked corridor for illegal crossings. “We’re going to get you more resources come hell or high water.”

The low-key nature of the president’s trek to the actual border — where he was joined by elected officials, area mayors, judges and CBP brass — provided a photo op meant to convey an emphasis on collaboration between government agencies and a solutions-focused approach, an implicit but razor-sharp contrast to Trump’s visit.

In Eagle Pass, Trump received his own briefing on the migrant crisis. He met with members of the Texas National Guard and was joined by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has regularly clashed with Biden over the southern border and has been at the center of the standoff in the city. Abbott’s busing of migrants to Democratic-led cities across the country has further amplified the issue — and made it impossible for Democrats to ignore.

Trump has doubled down on immigration on the campaign trail, blaming the border crisis on Biden and pitching voters on an expansion of his first-term crackdown on migrants, a plan that would include mass deportations.

He also has increasingly linked illegal immigration to crime. Speaking in Eagle Pass’ Shelby Park, Trump said he had spoken with the parents of Laken Riley, the 22-year-old University of Georgia student who was killed last week on campus. A migrant from Venezuela has been charged with her kidnapping, and the murder has become the latest flashpoint in the immigration fight.

“The blood of countless, innocent victims” is on Biden’s hands, Trump said.

Abbott said Biden’s abruptly scheduled visit shows the president “does not care about either Texas or the border.” He also issued a warning to Democrats.

“Unless and until Joe Biden steps up and does his job — that he has the power to do already, to enforce the laws of the United States of America — Texas will continue to bus those migrants to sanctuary cities,” said Abbott, who has endorsed the likely GOP nominee. “President Trump showed that when he was in office, he was able to secure the border. And I know that when he is reelected president, our border will once again be secured.”

Trump also unleashed fresh criticism of Democratic governors of other southern-border states, including Arizona’s Katie Hobbs and California’s Gavin Newsom, accusing them of letting migrants pour across their borders. He slapped a new nickname on the latter: “Newscum.”

The messaging battle began long before Biden and Trump landed in Texas. The Biden campaign has repeatedly highlighted the former president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, while taking every opportunity to place the blame for the border deal collapse squarely on Trump. The DNC launched a mobile billboard on Thursday timed with Trump’s visit accusing the former president of breaking the border and killing the legislation for “pure politics,” while the RNC slammed Biden’s trip as a “sanitized border drive-by.”

The visits also come amid an impasse with House Republicans over Ukraine funding, as Speaker Mike Johnson and many rank-and-file GOP members continue to demand action on border security before they act on defense aid. Johnson refused to consider the bipartisan and Biden-approved Senate compromise bill on border security that would have provided the funding to hire additional Border Patrol officers and tightened asylum laws. Even after being pressured about the urgency of Ukraine funding in an Oval Office meeting this week, Johnson has continued to demand that Biden use his executive authority to address the border.

Biden is weighing a number of executive actions that would mark a sweeping new approach for the White House. He’s considering a move to bar migrants from seeking asylum in between ports of entry once a certain number of illegal crossings take place — a move that would rely on a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act repeatedly used by Trump to shape the immigration system. Administration officials are also discussing ways to make it harder for asylum seekers to pass an initial screening, as well as a policy to quickly deport others who don’t meet the elevated standards.

But even as his administration takes a more aggressive approach to the border, there are signs Biden may have waited too long.

Larger shares of likely voters are saying in surveys that immigration is their top concern, and they’re giving Biden low marks on it. Just 35 percent of respondents to a Harvard-HarrisX pollconducted last week approved of how the president is handling immigration — the lowest approval rating for any of the 10 issues the pollsters surveyed on. Nearly three-quarters of likely voters surveyed said the Biden administration should make it tougher to enter the U.S. illegally.

Critically for the president, the public doesn’t seem to be buying his argument that it’s up to Congress to act. More than half of voters in the Harvard-HarrisX poll, 54 percent, said the Biden administration has the legal power it needs to address border security — including 51 percent of Democrats. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Republicans — 87 percent — agreed with Trump’s calls to block the border deal, while independents were evenly split.

And more than half of Americans now support building a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, according to a Monmouth University poll out this week — a higher percentage than at any point during Trump’s administration.

Biden “is on defense. It’s self-inflicted wounds,” said Dave Carney, a Republican strategist who has long served as a consultant to Abbott.

“The country’s not stupid. Voters get it. If [Biden] was coming down here to sign a bunch of executive orders and change the policies, it would be a good start,” Carney said. But, he added, “this is Trump’s strength.”

To flip that script, Colin Strother, a longtime Democratic strategist in Texas, said Biden should be even more aggressive against Trump and congressional Republicans blocking his border security efforts.

“To some extent, the president is playing too hard into the Republican narrative that this is somehow his mess,” Strother said. “He’s got to remind everyone that Trump had four years to do this with a Republican House and a Republican Senate [for the first two], and he literally chose not to do it.”

Biden is suffering from years of Democrats’ ineffective communication about steps the administration has taken at the border, Strother said.

“It’s unfortunate,” he added, “that it took an impending election for [Democrats] to finally jump on this.”