By Jerald Jimenez
Feb 26, 2024, 1:39 PM EST
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump plan to travel to the southern border between the United States and Mexico in Texas next Thursday, according to an Associated Press report.
Biden is expected to travel to Brownsville, Texas, to meet with Border Patrol agents and local leaders. The president plans to ask congressional Republicans to support a border security bill, which was introduced by bipartisan senators earlier this month.
The bill seeks to give the federal government temporary authority to expel immigrants when a certain level of daily crossings is exceeded, end “catch and release” of asylum seekers, raise standards for asylum evaluations and speed up the process of requests, among other requests.
Likewise, the president noted that the bill, which is led by Senators James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and Krysten Sinema, independent of Arizona, has the support of the Chamber of Commerce, the head of the Border Patrol union and the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Trump will come with a different approach
In Trump’s possible arrival at the southern border, he is expected to single out Biden for his role in what he has deemed an immigration crisis. This is due to the incessant criticism of Biden’s immigration policy, with the promise that if he is re-elected he will launch an operation to massively deport undocumented immigrants.
Regarding the bill that Biden hopes to be approved, Trump has opposed it, arguing that its approval would politically harm Republicans. These statements come after Mike Johnson, president of the Lower House, assured that the bill was “dead” upon reaching the House, and has also been rejected by dozens of Republicans in both chambers.
A Jan. 31 Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll of voters in seven swing states found that 61% believed Biden was at least partially responsible for the surge in migration at the southern border, while 52% trusted Trump more. than on Biden to address the border crisis.
With information from Associated Press / The Hill