Donald Trump and Joe Biden are scheduled to visit different parts of the Texas border on Thursday. (document)
Washington:
Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump will visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday in a high-profile clash of schedules as they both battle to win over voters on immigration, a key issue in the 2024 election. One of the most popular questions.
With record numbers of immigrants entering the United States, Biden has sought to defuse a major threat to his reelection campaign by blaming Congress for failing to support his reforms.
For Trump, years of hard-line anti-immigration stance have been central to his political identity, and he has repeatedly vowed to crack down on border crossings from Mexico as he seeks to return to the White House.
Rivals will visit different parts of the Texas border on Thursday, creating a dramatic split-screen moment with less than eight months until Americans cast their votes.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment after Trump officials claimed without evidence that Biden rushed to plan his trip after Trump’s visit was announced.
“I have no reaction to the former president, I will not talk about his schedule,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that Biden will meet with Border Patrol agents, law enforcement officials in Brownsville, Texas and local leaders.
“He will reiterate his call for congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and provide needed funding for more U.S. Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, fentanyl testing technology and more,” she said.
Biden also said during a visit to a New York ice cream shop on Monday that he had no prior knowledge of his potential opponent’s travel plans.
“I was planning (a trip to Texas) on Thursday, but I didn’t know that my good friend was obviously going to go,” he told reporters, an apparent reference to Trump.
– Two border towns, one day –
Biden also has not said whether he will meet with immigrants, amid criticism that he did not do so during his last visit.
“I’m not going to announce it in advance,” he said in New York.
Trump, who will travel to Eagle Pass, about 300 miles (480 kilometers) west of Brownsville, launched a new round of outbursts on immigration on social media.
“Evil gangs and gang members are pouring into our country from South America and around the world… Tens of thousands of people are pouring into ‘Good Ole’ America,” Trump said. “Biden will never be able to handle it.”
“The fact that Biden chased us to the border on the same day shows how much of a problem this is for him,” a Trump spokesman said.
Republicans blame Biden’s policies supporting asylum rights for the migrant surge, while the White House says Trump’s party is deliberately undermining efforts to find a solution.
Jean-Pierre told reporters at the Air Force that the latest bill, which has stalled in the Senate after House Republican leadership pledged to scuttle it, would be “the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades.” “. One of them was when Biden traveled to New York for a campaign event.
A new poll shows public concern about illegal immigration is higher under Biden than under the previous two administrations.
For the first time since Monmouth began raising the issue in 2015, a majority of Americans now support building a border wall, one of Trump’s flagship policies, the report said.
“Illegal immigration has become a defining issue in this presidential election year,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
“Other Monmouth polling has found this to be Biden’s weakest policy area, including among his fellow Democrats.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
