President Joe Biden and his likely GOP challenger, Donald Trump, will both appear at the southern border on Thursday.
Trump already had a visit to the border scheduled and is campaigning heavily on illegal immigration. Biden announced Monday morning that he’d be making his own trip to counter Trump, visiting the Rio Grande Valley city of Brownsville, Texas.
“[Biden] will discuss the urgent need to pass the Senate bipartisan border security agreement, the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades,” an unnamed White House official said. “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 president will reportedly meet with Border Patrol agents, members of law enforcement, and local leaders.
Immigration is Biden’s lowest-rated issue, with his approval rating at 31.2%, per RealClearPolitics, versus 64.5% who disapprove. He has been largely put on the defensive on the subject as record border crossings occurred during each of his first three years in office, though he’s trying to place blame on Republicans for rejecting a bill designed to address the situation.
“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden said on Feb. 6. “It’s time for Republicans in the Congress to show a little courage, to show a little spine to make it clear to the American people that you work for them and not for anyone else.”
Biden is likely to further that message on Thursday.
Republicans say the proposed measures would not solve the border crisis and, in some cases, would make it worse, which is why they rejected it, though Democrats allege that the GOP did so in order to preserve immigration as a topic for Trump to campaign on.
Trump’s team says Biden’s counterprogramming smacks of desperation.
The Trump campaign viewed the Biden announcement as the president chasing Trump to the border and realizing he has an immigration problem.
“Biden chasing us to the border on the same day shows just how big of a problem this is for him,” a source close to the Trump campaign said in response.
Among other things, the GOP is calling on Biden to apologize to the family of Laken Hope Riley, a college student from Georgia who was killed. The suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, has been confirmed as an illegal immigrant from Venezuela.
“As I have stated many times in the past, your actions and those of your administration have resulted in every state in the country experiencing the disastrous impacts of an unsecured U.S. southern border,” Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) wrote in an open letter to Biden.
Biden is also weighing executive actions to help secure the border, which he may announce during the trip. The president issued several immigration-related executive orders during his first week in office, many of which reversed Trump’s policies.
Mabinty Quarshie contributed to this report.