BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump visited the southern border Thursday in a dramatic split-screen moment as the 2024 presidential campaign ramps up over an issue that has confounded administrations of both parties for decades.
Biden’s briefing from border officials here began just moments after Trump began his remarks in Eagle Pass.
It’s time to take appropriate action. He stated that border security “desperately” needs more resources.
President Joe Biden has made a direct appeal to Donald Trump, asking him to join him in urging Congress to pass the pandemic aid bill, which Trump’s allies in Congress tanked.
“You know and I know it’s the most challenging, most effective and efficient border security bill this country has ever seen,” Biden remarked.
Biden praised the bipartisan border bill as a “victory for the American people,” calling it a “truly bipartisan initiative.” He called on the Senate to reconsider the bill, asking senators to “set politics aside” and for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to put the bill on the floor.
“We need to act,” Biden said, adding that Republicans in Congress needed to “show a little spine.”
Following the President’s remarks, the Trump campaign has released a statement.
Instead of placing the blame on everyone else but himself, Joe Biden should accept responsibility for the border security crisis, deaths, and destruction that his policies have caused, say Laken Riley’s name, and make use of his executive power to close the border down today,” Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
In his remarks, Trump said the death of Riley, 22, a graduate nursing student who was killed this month while on a jog near the University of Georgia, was “barbaric” and referred to her as “a beautiful young woman.”
Conservatives throughout the country have pointed to Riley’s death as an example of migrant crime following an undocumented Venezuelan migrant being charged with involvement in her death.
On Thursday, Donald Trump revealed that he spoke to Riley’s parents on Wednesday. “They’re wonderful individuals who are shattered beyond comprehension,” he said.
Trump also called the migrant crisis a “Joe Biden invasion” and a “vicious violation to our country.”
After being sworn in, President Biden took his second trip to the U.S.-Mexico border on February 23, 2022. His first visit was to El Paso in January 2023. This time, he visited Brownsville, a border town in the Rio Grande Valley that has always felt the effects of migration up close.
The following text: Many critics have noted that President Biden is visiting Brownsville at a time when the most pressing consequences of the influx of migrants have shifted elsewhere. More migrants are now crossing at other sections of the border, including Arizona and Eagle Pass, according to Customs and Border Protection, the agency that also includes the Border Patrol.
Despite the fact that President Trump has been to the border many times before, he revealed his trip before the White House did. Biden said this week that he had been planning to go but that he didn’t know “his good friend” would be there on the same day. Two high-ranking officials revealed that the purpose of the trip was to maximize its political impact, one week before the State of the Union. One official said, “We welcome the split screen.”
“Nice weather. A beautiful day. However, there is a violent border. We’re going to take care of it.
Trump joked of Biden on a radio show this week: “Well, we found out how to get him off his ass. It took me announcing that I’m going down to the border.”
On Wednesday, the White House asserted that Biden’s trip to Germany was already planned.
“We simply can’t put something on the schedule just like that.” Jean-Pierre replied, in response to a question about whether Trump’s visit prompted the White House’s announcement.
According to a January survey conducted by NBC News, 57% of registered voters said Trump would ideally deal with border security, while 22% said the same of Biden. According to the results of the survey, 48% of people said they would trust Biden to treat refugees fairly, while 31% said the same of Trump.
The Biden administration has been claiming that the House Republican caucus – at Trump’s urging – blocked a bipartisan bill passed that included $20 billion for border security. The bill was debated in the Senate and endorsed by the Border Patrol Union The White House has indicated that it has added 100 immigration judges, 1,000 Customs and Border Protection personnel, and 4,000 asylum officers, as well as more detention beds. It would have also funded the installation of more inspection equipment to detect fentanyl at ports of entry.
But Johnson, the Speaker of the House, stated that the Senate version did not go far enough to deal with the border crisis. Democrats accuse the GOP of refusing to cooperate on the immigration issue to ensure that it continues to be highlighted during an election year to claim that Biden has failed to do enough to stop the migrant influx.
According to congressional inaction, Biden has been thinking about executive measures to tighten asylum guidelines. Migrants’ advocates and progressive Democrats have urged him not to do so, warning that making it more difficult for immigrants to claim asylum puts them in perilous situations in Mexico.
The Democratic National Committee said on Thursday that it would display a mobile billboard in Eagle Pass during Trump’s visit criticizing his efforts to annihilate the bipartisan border legislation and his immigration policies.
A new Billboard will state, “Trump broke the deal,” during his presidency, “and now for pure political reasons, he’s destroyed bipartisan border agreement,” according to the panel.
“If given the opportunity, Trump would double down on his horrific, disruptive, and inhuman immigration plan of tearing apart families from their children and parents, rounding up people into detention centers, and using the military to carry out mass deportations,” DNC spokeswoman Alex Floyd said in a statement on
Republicans claim that the Trump administration’s border policies deterred illegal immigration and safeguarded the border. They quit rising in 2019 before Covid struck. Before Trump himself backed away from one piece of particularly contentious immigration policy – what was known as “zero tolerance” – which resulted in the forced separation of migrant families at the southern border in 2017.
Joe Biden took office in 2021 and promised a return to more “humane” immigration rules, and immediately signed executive orders rolling back some Trump-era regulations. In 2022, the Biden administration also revoked a rule known as “Remain in Mexico,” which mandated that asylum-seekers wait along the border while their requests were reviewed.
The White House quickly discovered that its policies didn’t reduce the flow of migrants after the pandemic halted. Rather, record numbers of immigrants arrived at our southern border. The Border Patrol reported 1,659,206 encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2021 fiscal year, topping the previous highs of 1,643,679 in 2000 and 1,615,844 in 198
Trump and his supporters held Democrats responsible for the influx of migrants from Central America, blaming what they saw as Biden’s lax policies. The Biden administration claimed that the shift is due to other factors, including seasonal changes, hurricanes in Central America, and misinformation promoted by human traffickers.
The flood of migrants hasn’t stopped, and it has little to do with the migrants themselves. In Texas border cities like Eagle Pass and El Paso, there have been record-breaking influxes that have put local resources to the test and prompted frantic calls for federal assistance. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott escalated the border conflict by appointing state troopers to monitor and monitor the border against federal government orders.
Since then, large cities such as New York, Chicago, and Denver have struggled to care for tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived. The White House said the stalled bipartisan border bill would have included $1.4 billion for cities and states.
