Biden And Trump Face Off At Southern Border In Dueling Visits

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to hold 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 meets with Border Patrol agents, law enforcement and local leaders in Brownsville, Texas, Trump — whose plans were announced before the White House trip — will be stationed over 300 miles away in Eagle Pass, Texas, the site of the state-federal standoff over border security. Trump will also sit for an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity during his drop-in.

The competing appearances will 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 — 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 shift the political blame to Republicans and Trump, who urged GOP members to kill a bipartisan Senate border deal earlier this month.

“When we got this bill done — by the way, it included a lot of things that House Republicans wanted — when we got that done, it was rejected because of politics,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during Wednesday’s briefing. “So, the president is going to make that very clear and take it directly to the American people.”

The messaging battle began 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.”

“The House Republican leadership under orders, direct orders from Donald Trump … chose to do nothing,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) in a call with reporters organized by the Biden campaign. “And so this inaction that you're seeing now in the House is 100 percent Donald Trump’s bidding and the fault of Donald Trump. He doesn’t want action. He wants to win reelection.”

Underscoring the degree to which the White House is leaning in on the issue, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who House Republicans voted to impeach earlier this month, is traveling with Biden aboard Air Force One.

For his part, Trump has doubled down on the issue on the campaign trail, blaming the border crisis on Biden and pitching voters on an expansion of his first-term crackdown on migrants, including mass deportations. In speeches, he often links immigration to crime in the U.S. and is expected to speak Thursday about the death of 22-year-old University of Georgia student Laken Riley. A migrant from Venezuela who has been charged with her kidnapping and murder has become the latest flashpoint on immigration.

The RNC on Wednesday slammed Biden’s trip as a “sanitized border drive-by.”

Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, cast the situation at the southern border squarely as “Biden’s crisis.”

“Today, President Trump will visit the crime scene at Biden’s open border, where Joe Biden’s failure has resulted in more than 9 million illegal immigrants, 27 tons of deadly fentanyl, and dangerous criminals crossing the border since he took office,” spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

The visit also comes 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, of course, refused to consider the bipartisan and Biden-approved Senate compromise 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.

Lisa Kashinksy contributed to this report.