President Biden plans to make a rare visit to the southern border on Thursday, his press secretary said, traveling to Brownsville, Texas, on the same day that former President Donald J. Trump had already planned a border trip.
The plans underscore the urgency now driving Mr. Biden and his team on the immigration issue, which has become one of his biggest policy commitments. Under the Biden administration, record numbers of migrants have crossed the southern border — a fact that Mr. Trump and Republicans have aggressively exploited against Mr. Biden.
A majority of Americans disapprove of Mr. Biden’s job performance, and polls show that voters who disapprove of him cite immigration as a reason more than any other political issue.
According to Karine Jean-Pierre, Mr. Biden’s press secretary, Mr. Biden plans to meet with border patrol agents, law enforcement and local officials on his trip to Brownsville on Thursday. The president is expected to blame the migration crisis on House Republicans who blocked a bipartisan package that would have imposed tough restrictions at the border and call on Congress to come together and address the challenge.
Mr. Biden has considered executive action that would essentially prevent those crossing the border from seeking asylum, but Ms. Jean-Pierre has not indicated any new policies he would put in place.
“His leaving is an act,” she said. “He takes this very seriously.”
Mr Trump will visit Eagle Pass in Texas on Thursday. CNN reported on the planned trip last week. Mr. Trump plans to make remarks from the border to highlight the immigration crisis and shift blame to Mr. Biden, according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to publicly discuss the plans.
Mr. Trump is expected to highlight crimes committed by migrants in New York and other cities, adding the arrest of an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant in connection with the recent high-profile killing of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia.
On Monday, after news of Mr. Biden’s visit broke, Mr. Trump tried to blame his rival for the killing, writing on his social media page: “If I am your president, we will close the border immediately “Seal and stop the invasion,” and on day one we will begin the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals in American history!”
Mr. Biden’s visit to Brownsville, which has felt the impact of increases in illegal border crossings in the past, comes as the White House seeks to shift its policy strategy at the border. For much of his time in office, Mr. Biden and his aides avoided speaking publicly about the border, despite early warnings from his senior aides that the migration crisis could undermine his support among voters.
His advisers debated for months whether to adopt more enforcement-oriented policies at the border to deal with the surge in migration, as Republicans accused Mr. Biden of being weak on border security.
But after months of denouncing Mr. Biden over the border, House Republicans then rejected the bipartisan immigration bill, in part because Mr. Trump did not want Mr. Biden to score a political victory.
Mr. Biden’s senior advisers believe the opposition has allowed the White House to go on the attack, accusing Republicans of playing politics only at the border and failing to actually alleviate the crisis. Democratic officials also urged the White House to attack Republicans for backing away from a package that included the kind of restrictions that even Trump allies have been calling for for years.
“There is chaos at the border,” Mr. Biden told donors in Los Altos Hills, California, last week. “They don’t have the staff.” He said Republicans wouldn’t even give the government the money “for the machines to detect the fentanyl coming in.”
“It’s not about what it says about political courage, it’s about what it says about the state of the party,” Mr. Biden said.
The executive order being considered by Mr. Biden would require the border to be closed to new arrivals if an average of more than 5,000 migrants per day over the course of a week or more than 8,500 attempted to cross the border illegally on any given day. It is likely to be blocked by the courts, but even introducing such an order would allow the White House to fend off accusations that it is avoiding the crisis and continue to put pressure on Republicans to reach a legislative compromise.
However, where that stands is uncertain. At a White House meeting with governors on Friday during the National Governors Association conference, Mr. Biden told governors that lawyers had told him he could not take the actions that Mr. Trump had taken, according to two people familiar with the remarks . It was unclear which agency he was specifically referring to.
“There is no executive action that would have done what the proposal negotiated by the bipartisan Senate would have done,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “The Senate reached a bipartisan agreement that took four months. Republicans stood in the way because Donald Trump asked them to.”
By visiting the border, the White House apparently hoped to avoid a political backlash of the kind it faced when Mr. Biden took about a year to visit East Palestine, Ohio, after a Norfolk Southern train derailed and had spilled a toxic mess in the small town.
Mr. Trump filled the void by visiting the community in February 2023 in the weeks after the derailment, fueling accusations that Mr. Biden had neglected the crisis.
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2024-02-26 19:32:49
www.nytimes.com
