Immigration has replaced the economy as the main issue of political confrontation between Republicans and Democrats. Just over eight months before the 2024 presidential elections, the two likely candidates for these elections will meet this Thursday at the border with Mexico. Former President Donald Trump travels to Eagle Pass, Texas, to denounce what he calls an “invasion” of immigrants. Current President Joe Biden will drive about 300 miles (500 kilometers) away to Brownsville, also in Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, to denounce Republicans boycotting his border security proposals to blame him.
For Biden, it will be his second visit to the border as president, after traveling to El Paso in January last year. The White House announced the trip this Monday after publishing its weekly agenda on Sunday without this forecast appearing. He did so after releasing information about Trump's visit this Thursday. Still, Biden has hinted that it was a coincidence: “I planned it for Thursday, what I didn't know is that apparently my good friend is going to leave,” he said, referring to Trump when asked in an ice cream was salon in New York, where he stopped this Monday after a television interview.
“As you all know, President Biden will travel to Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday to meet with United States Border Patrol agents, law enforcement and local leaders,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean Pierre said Monday. “It will highlight the urgent need to approve the Senate’s bipartisan deal on border security, the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades,” he added. It is one of the hottest areas for irregular border crossings.
Trump's pressure has derailed a bill that included aid to Ukraine and Israel but also reforms to curb illegal immigration at the border with Mexico, which broke records during Biden's presidency. The border measures were a call from Republicans to green light aid to Ukraine and Israel, but when push comes to shove, they prefer to step back and continue to use the migration flow as an electoral weapon.
For this reason, according to Jean-Pierre, Biden “will repeat his appeals to Republican members of Congress to stop playing politics and provide the necessary resources to increase the number of United States Border Patrol agents, as well as asylum officers,” fentanyl detection technology and much more,” he said this Monday.
Biden is exploring the possibility of issuing a decree with some measures to make it more difficult for immigrants to pass through or to ease their expulsion. When asked by journalists, the White House spokesman did not want to anticipate the content or timing of a possible signing of this hypothetical executive order. “I have nothing to say at the moment. The closer we get to Thursday, the more we will have to share,” he replied.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
Among the measures Biden's team is exploring is invoking powers under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the president broad latitude to block the entry of certain immigrants if it is “detrimental” to the national interest. were. But unless the law is changed, any decree against border crossings will likely be challenged in court.
Trump resorted to this rule repeatedly during his time in office, including his controversial ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, which Biden lifted immediately after taking office. It is currently being examined whether it can be applied if a certain number of illegal border crossings are exceeded, as provided for in a provision of the draft law. This rule would have activated the immediate return of migrants if an average of more than 5,000 illegal crossings per day occurred over a five-day period.
Jean-Pierre has insisted that no decree can achieve what the law that Republicans and Democrats were negotiating and which had enough support to move forward before Trump's push would achieve. “We think Republicans should get out of the way and not politicize this.” “This is an issue that concerns the American people, the majority of the American people,” he said. Democrats are trying to defend themselves against allegations about the border and immigration. “It was the toughest and fairest agreement we've ever seen. And if it had become law, it would have made a difference,” he said.
Biden will listen directly to border guards, the spokeswoman said, but she did not want to clarify whether he would also meet with immigrants. The agents, he said, “have done everything possible to secure the border with the tools at their disposal,” but “they need more.”
Biden's policies of opening legal pathways for orderly migration to the United States while increasing penalties for illegal pathways have not stopped the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States. The legislation allows immigrants to seek asylum regardless of how they arrive, and they are arriving in such numbers that the capacity of an underfunded immigration system is overwhelmed. This effectively allows immigrants to settle while their cases are delayed for years.
Arrests for illegal border crossings fell by half in January, but record highs were seen in December.
Trump, who made immigration a focus of his campaign in the 2016 election, is heading to Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a tough battle with constitutional implications pitting the federal government against the Texas government over immigration control. That same month, a caravan of the former president's supporters arrived there to support Gov. Gregg Abbott, who defied Washington as he tried to wrest immigration control from federal authorities.
Trump repeatedly talks about immigrants at his rallies, sometimes incoherently or with lies. “They come from everywhere: South America, Asia and Africa.” Police attacked in Times Square [en Nueva York] and to the good people of South Carolina who visit Washington, where the marble columns of the monuments are covered in graffiti,” he said untruthfully in South Carolina a few days ago. “It’s crazy,” he added.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.