President Biden, Former President Trump visit border on competing visits

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (KBTX) – President Joe Biden and Former President Donald Trump both arrived at the Texas border, three hundred miles apart on Thursday. Immigration and border security are top voter concerns, and both discussed the issues amid their campaigns.

President Biden made a trip to the southern border and then visited the Border Patrol Office in Brownsville. He received public briefings about different agencies and the challenges they face. His main message, was to pass the bipartisan legislation agreed to in the Senate but opposed by GOP leadership.

“I’ll join you in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill. We can do it together. You know, and I know, it’s the toughest most efficient, most effective border security bill this country’s ever seen. So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done,” Biden said, “Let’s remember who the heck we work for – we work for the American people.”

The president touted some of the things in the bill which would allow for more technology and resources the two things agencies who presented to the president said they lack right now.

Trump stopped in Eagle Pass for a campaign event. His event was not open to the media, only Fox News reporters were allowed in.

“People are pouring in,” Trump said. “They think they’re gonna get medical aid. And our soldiers our vets aren’t being taken care of. But people that come into our country illegally are.”

Governor Greg Abbott and Texas National Guard soldiers took Trump on a tour of a local park. The city has been at the center of Abbott’s state-led border crackdown, Operation Lone Star. Abbott has deployed thousands of National Guard troops, spools of concertina wire that stretch for miles and spiked floating barriers in the middle of the Rio Grande — a show of force meant to deter illegal crossings through the Eagle Pass area.

“We have President Trump back in the state of Texas, literally on the border itself, a place that he is been to many times, talking about all the things that he’s done to secure the border. At the very same time, we have President Biden down in Brownsville, Texas, which was an obligatory visit by him. He’d never been to the border,” Abbott said.

Biden visited the border in 2023 and Abbott met him at the airport, shaking his hand and telling reporters that Biden “said he wanted to work with us on it.”

The trip could play an important role in the outcome of the 2024 election.

According to an AP-NORC poll in January, the share of voters concerned about immigration rose to 35% from 27% last year. Fifty-five percent of Republicans say the government needs to focus on immigration in 2024, while 22% of Democrats listed immigration as a priority.