300 miles apart, Biden and Trump tour U.S.-Mexico border
In this combination of photos, President Joe Biden, left, speaks on Aug. 10, 2023, in Salt Lake City, and former President Donald Trump speaks on June 13, 2023, in Bedminster, N.J. Biden and Trump will make dueling trips to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas on Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, following the failed border deal that was opposed by the Republican front-runner. (AP Photo)
By SEUNG MIN KIM, JILL COLVIN and COLLEEN LONG Associated Press
Three hundred miles apart, President Joe Biden and likely Republican challenger Donald Trump walked the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas Thursday, dueling trips underscoring how important immigration has become for the 2024 election and how much each man wants to use it to his advantage.
Each chose an optimal location to make his points, their schedules remarkably similar. They each got a briefing on operations and issues, walked along the border and gave remarks that overlapped. But that’s where the comparisons ended.
Biden, who sought to spotlight how Republicans tanked a bipartisan border security deal on Trump’s orders, went to the Rio Grande Valley city of Brownsville. For nine years, this was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, but they have dropped sharply in recent months.
The president walked a quiet stretch of the border along the Rio Grande, and received a lengthy operations briefing from Homeland Security agents who talked to him bluntly about what more they needed.
“I want the American people to know what we’re trying to get done,” he said to officials there. “We can’t afford not to do this.”
Trump, meanwhile, continued his dialed-up attacks on migrants arriving to the border.
“This is a Joe Biden invasion,” Trump said.
Trump was in Eagle Pass, roughly 325 miles northwest of Brownsville, in the corridor that’s currently seeing the largest number of crossings.
Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas National Guard soldiers gave him a tour, showing off razor wire they put up on Abbott’s orders and in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court order.
“This is like a war,” Trump said.
The number of people who are illegally crossing the U.S. border has been rising for years.
The administration’s approach has been to pair crackdowns at the border with increasing legal pathways for migrants.
Arrests for illegal crossings fell by half in January, but there were record highs in December. The numbers of migrants flowing across the U.S-Mexico border have far outpaced the capacity of an immigration system that has not been substantially updated in decades.
Among those voters, worries about the nation’s broken immigration system are rising on both sides of the political divide, which could be especially problematic for Biden.
According to an AP-NORC poll in January, the share of voters concerned about immigration rose to 35% from 27% last year. Fifty-five percent of Republicans say the government needs to focus on immigration in 2024, while 22% of Democrats listed immigration as a priority. That’s up from 45% and 14%, respectively, from December 2022.
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