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President Biden and former President Donald Trump will make dueling visits to the border on Thursday, jockeying for political advantage and blame on an issue increasingly crucial to voters.
Mr. Biden will take a look at a relatively calm part of the border in Brownsville, Texas. The White House said he would meet with Border Patrol agents and local officials and press Congress to pass legislation giving him more flexibility to control the flow of migrants.
Mr. Trump will be about 300 miles away in Eagle Pass, where the border is far more chaotic and where the federal government and Texas are enmeshed in a brewing constitutional crisis over the state’s efforts to combat illegal immigration on its own.
Mr. Biden largely ignored the border as it spiraled out of control on his watch. He has made just one brief visit. The White House said he sees an opportunity to blame Republicans as they block action on a bipartisan border bill.
“We had said that we are going to take it to the American people so that they know,” said spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre. “They know what’s going on in Congress.”
Mr. Biden has been pummeled over the death of Laken Hope Riley, a college student in Georgia, and the arrest of an illegal immigrant accused of the slaying.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan, was caught at the southern border in 2022 and was released under Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ power of “parole.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said New York City police arrested him last year on charges of a driving license infraction and “acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17.” The city released him before ICE could issue a detainer.
ICE has now issued a detainer in Georgia asking to be notified if Mr. Ibarra is released again.
Mr. Biden is pondering executive actions to try to revive Trump-era border policies, though the White House has declined to say whether he plans any specific announcements.
The president is also desperate to unlock tens of billions of dollars in assistance for Ukraine’s war, whose fate has become linked with improvements to U.S. border security.
Mr. Trump frequently visited the border during his term in office. His wall-building effort may be his most visible campaign promise and concrete presidential achievement. He mocked Mr. Biden as a copycat for visiting on the same day as his trip to the border.
“Crooked Joe Biden has had three years to visit the border and fix the crisis he created. Now Biden’s handlers are sending him there on the same day as President Trump’s publicly reported trip, not because they actually want to solve the problem, but because they know Biden is losing terribly,” said Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Voters tell pollsters they rate Mr. Biden’s handling of immigration worse than any other major issue, and it’s easy to see why.
Mr. Trump turned over a relatively calm border, with about 74,000 illegal immigrants nabbed at the southern border in December 2020, the last full month on his watch. Nearly all were detained or quickly deported.
This December, the Department of Homeland Security detected more than 300,000 illegal immigrants at the southern border, the vast majority of whom were caught and released.
All told, more than 3 million illegal immigrants have been released into American communities since the start of Mr. Biden’s tenure, stressing communities’ ability to assimilate them. The Biden administration has also set records for the amount of fentanyl smuggling and the number of terrorism suspects detected at the southern border.
Republicans argue that Mr. Biden invited the chaos with his crusade to erase a series of get-tough Trump policies that were successful. They included restricting asylum claims and pushing illegal immigrants back into Mexico to deny them a foothold in the U.S. while they awaited their immigration court hearings.
Now, Mr. Biden is reportedly pondering reviving some of those policies through executive action, contemplating a road-to-Damascus conversion that would anger his left flank as he seeks to stanch bleeding in the political center.
The president hoped to sign the bipartisan border bill developed in the Senate as a shield against criticism.
That legislation was defeated in a bipartisan filibuster in the Senate this month, with a handful of Democrats joining most Republicans to block it.
Republicans said the plan didn’t do enough to stop illegal immigration, allowing as many as 5,000 illegal immigrants a day. Democrats who opposed it said it went too far in cracking down on migrants’ chances to claim asylum.
Senators will likely take up impeachment proceedings against Mr. Mayorkas, whom the House slapped with the ignominy of being the first Cabinet secretary in history to be impeached.
Ms. Jean-Pierre said Mr. Biden wants to use his visit to talk with Border Patrol agents about what more resources they need.
“They need more,” she said.
Mr. Biden has proposed adding more agents to the force, though the Border Patrol is already well below its maximum funded level as it battles attrition within its ranks.
Agents almost universally support more border walls, roads and technology, though Mr. Biden has opposed those plans and insisted he wouldn’t build another foot on his watch.
Mr. Biden’s first visit to the border was in January 2023. He went to El Paso, Texas, and announced changes he said would solve the surge of people, including using “parole” powers to try to persuade unauthorized migrants to schedule their arrivals at official entry points.
The border numbers dipped but surged again that spring, dipped in the early summer then reached catastrophic levels late year.
Mr. Trump made numerous visits to the border during his time in office, often to get progress reports on his wall project.
His trip this week to Eagle Pass will put him at a key flashpoint.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered his state police and National Guard troops to lay miles of razor wire along the Rio Grande and to install a floating wall in the river to try to block the flow of migrants who were wading across.
Both of those are the subject of tense court battles.
Texas National Guard troops also took control of a local park that the Border Patrol had been using as a staging area for catch-and-release operations.
• Jeff Mordock contributed to this report.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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