President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are expected to make separate visits to towns along the southern border on Thursday.
Biden will visit the border town of Brownsville, where he will “discuss the urgent need to pass the Senate bipartisan border security agreement, the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters this week.
“He will reiterate his calls for congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and to provide the funding needed for additional U.S. Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, fentanyl detection technology, and more.”
“Obviously, he’s going to meet with frontline folks who work on the ground, including Border Patrol agents; hear directly from them; see, also, for himself what is it that they do every day to protect Americans, to secure the border,” Jean-Pierre added.
The border has become one of the most discussed topics leading up to the general election in November, with lawmakers calling for action because of the high number of unlawful migrants crossing into the U.S. each day.
A previous bill meant to manage the crisis was blocked in the U.S. Senate due to the high number of unlawful migrant encounters it required to trigger a shutdown of the border, as well as the expensive foreign aid package tied to it.
The bill would have allowed more than 1.8 million unlawful crossings each year while also providing more than $80 billion to foreign countries and just $20.23 billion to address the border crisis, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
While Biden makes his appearance in Brownsville, Trump will be roughly 300 miles away in Eagle Pass to give remarks.
Trump campaign Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt released a statement criticizing the Biden administration for the lack of response at the border, saying the president “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,” she alleged.
“Biden’s last-minute, insincere attempt to chase President Trump to the border won’t cut it — Americans know Biden is single-handedly responsible for the worst immigration crisis in history and the ensuing Biden Migrant Crime Crisis affecting every community in our Country.”
These visits come as Texas continues to deal with a significant increase in encounters with unlawful migrants, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection reporting record-breaking numbers.
Since Biden took office in 2021, CBP has reported 7,550,836 encounters with unlawful migrants at the southern border.
In addition, the House Homeland Security Committee stated that roughly 1.7 million unlawful migrants have evaded apprehension since Biden took office.
These staggering numbers led Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to begin busing some unlawful migrants to sanctuary cities across the country. For the busing initiative alone, the influx of border-crosses has cost Texas state taxpayers more than $148 million since it began in April 2022, as previously reported by DX.
