Biden and Trump to visit US-Mexico border as immigration plays key role in election

Joe Biden and his all-but certain Republican challenger, Donald Trump, will make dueling visits to Texas border towns on Thursday, a rare overlap that sets the stage for an election season in which immigration plays a central role.

In Brownsville, along the Rio Grande river, Biden is expected to hammer Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border security deal after Trump expressed his vocal opposition to the measure. Hundreds of miles north-west, Trump will deliver remarks from a state park in Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a showdown between the Biden administration and the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.

Hours before the president and former president arrived on the 2,000-mile stretch of border, a federal judge sided with the Biden administration and blocked a new Texas law that would give police power to arrest migrants suspected of entering the US unlawfully.

Trump once again intends to make immigration a centerpiece of his presidential campaign by claiming that Biden has allowed the US to be overrun by undocumented immigrants who “poisoning the blood of our country”, rhetoric that echoes white supremacists and Adolf Hitler. While there, he is expected to lay out his plans for an immigration crackdown far beyond what he attempted in his first term.

Immigration has become one of the president’s most acute political vulnerabilities ahead of the 2024 election.

Since Biden took office, a record number of migrants have crossed the southern border, driven by war, political upheaval, gang violence and climate change among other factors. Though the number of crossings dropped dramatically in January, according to border patrol data, there were record highs in December.

Voters across the political