(Washington) Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who are well on their way to facing each other in the November presidential election, are both traveling to the southern border of the United States on Thursday to discuss immigration, a hot topic in the campaign.
The 81-year-old Democratic president will travel to Brownsville, Texas, where he will meet with Border Patrol agents and local officials, according to the White House.
His predecessor Donald Trump, 77, will go to the Texan town of Eagle Pass, some 500 km away. The Republican continues to virulently insist that his rival is at the origin of a migration crisis.
Joe Biden travels to Texas “to hear from Border Patrol agents […] what is happening on the ground,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on CNN on Thursday.
The president will also give a speech and “Americans will hear him explain how Republicans preferred to play politics rather than solve problems,” she added.
Because a law on the subject, negotiated by members of both parties, was ultimately rejected by Republicans in Congress “at the request of Donald Trump,” says the spokesperson, adding that the ex-president did so. “for his own political benefit”.
Asked about his visit, Joe Biden recently claimed not to have known that his “good friend was going there” too, a sarcastic allusion to his rival.
The Trump camp, on the contrary, accuses him of imitating the tempestuous businessman.
Members of the Democratic president’s team are now “sending him there on the same day” as Mr. Trump, “not because they really want to solve the problem, but because they know Biden is lose considerably,” said a spokesperson for the Republican’s campaign team, Karoline Leavitt.
“Americans know that Biden is single-handedly responsible for the worst migration crisis in history and the resulting migrant crime crisis,” she said.
No political victory
The Republican camp accuses Joe Biden and his administration of worsening the flow of migrants through their asylum policies.
The White House assures that the Republican Party is deliberately sabotaging any attempt at compromise on the issue, and that Donald Trump does not intend to give a political victory to Joe Biden in the middle of an election year.
The former right-wing president, who had built his popularity during his first victorious campaign by promising the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico, recently used all his influence with Republican elected officials in Congress to block a text on immigration.
The agreement provided, in addition to migration reform, an additional aid envelope for Ukraine and Israel.
Donald Trump assures that the expulsion of migrants would be one of his priorities if he were re-elected. “They are killing our people, they are killing our country,” he said recently.
In recent weeks, the state of Texas has engaged in a real standoff with the administration of Joe Biden, its Republican governor Greg Abbott, a big supporter of Donald Trump, accusing the government of allowing an “invasion” of migrants irregulars on the southern border of the country.
Border control is a federal jurisdiction in the United States, but Texas has increased measures aimed at countering immigration, with several legal disputes underway on this subject.