President Biden and former President Donald Trump will make dueling visits to the border on Thursday as they seek to gain advantage on an issue increasingly crucial to voters.
The White House said Mr. Biden will visit Brownsville, Texas, where he will meet with Border Patrol agents and local officials. He will press for action on a bill that was filibustered in the Senate, with many Republicans calling it an amnesty deal.
Mr. Trump‘s campaign confirmed his trip, though it didn’t immediately give a location.
Mr. Biden has avoided the border for most of his tenure, making just one prior brief visit. He is now weighing executive action on border security.
His new trip comes just as senators are likely to take up impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The president is also desperate to unlock tens of billions of dollars in assistance for Ukraine’s war, which he’s tried to tie with a U.S. border bill that many Republicans say would let 5,000 illegals flood into the country daily.
“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,” the White House said.
The bill that Mr. Biden is backing was defeated in a bipartisan filibuster in the Senate earlier this month, with most Republicans joined by a handful of Democrats. Republicans said the plan didn’t do enough to stop illegal immigration, while the Democrats who opposed it said it went too far in cracking down on migrants’ chances to claim asylum.
Mr. Biden is trying to revive the deal, or at least to fix political blame for its failure on Republicans, and on Mr. Trump in particular.
House Republicans’ campaign arm called Mr. Biden‘s trip a “political stunt” and pointed to a strict border security bill that cleared the House last year, but which has seen no action in the Senate.
The border, as much as any other issue, highlights the competition between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden as they prepare for their likely rematch in November.
Mr. Trump turned over a relatively secure border, with almost no migrants being caught and released. Mr. Biden has seen border numbers quadruple, with at least 3 million illegal immigrants caught and released over the past three years.