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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:03:55 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden, Trump head to US-Mexico border with immigration top issue in 2024 raceJoe Biden and Donald Trump will both be in Texas today to visit the US border with Mexico, amid public frustration over undocumented migrants crossing into the country. The visits by the current and former president come after a bargain to implement hardline policies meant to keep migrants out coupled with new military aid to Ukraine and Israel fell apart in Congress, leaving the fate of these national security priorities uncertain. Yet all signs point to continued public anxiety about the state of the southern border – this week, Gallup released polling that showed immigration was the top problem on the public’s mind. Trump has long promised to implement draconian policies against undocumented migrants, and did so during his presidency. Biden, meanwhile, promised a more humane approach, but struggled to deal with a surge in border crossings that began after he took office, and the Republican attacks that accompanied them. We’ll keep an eye out for what the two men may say when they arrive in Texas. The president gets there this afternoon.
Biden to press for passage of immigration bill in Texas border visitJoe Biden will arrive in Brownsville, Texas, at about 2.30pm ET, and is scheduled to received briefings from federal agents at the border, and then give a speech at 4.30pm. Ahead of his visit, the White House released a memo arguing for passage of a bipartisan Senate compromise announced earlier this month that would have tightened immigration policy, and also sent military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Republicans ultimately stopped passage of the bill, which the Biden administration is quick to note in its memo: President Biden has repeatedly said he is willing to work in a bipartisan way to secure the border and fix our broken immigration system. Over several months, his Administration negotiated with a bipartisan group of Senators to release a bill that includes the toughest and fairest reforms to secure the border we have had in decades. It would make our country safer, make our border more secure, and treat people fairly and humanely while preserving legal immigration, consistent with our nation’s values. The bill received support from the Border Patrol Union, the Chamber of Commerce, the South Texas Alliance of Cities, and the Wall Street Journal – but Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans have decided to play politics at the expense of border security.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:14:46 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump will meanwhile today visit Eagle Pass, Texas, a much smaller city than Brownsville hundreds of miles to its north-west. The Associated Press has a rundown of how the situation in the two regions’ differ. The biggest takeaway: Biden is visiting an area where border crossings have recently dropped, while Trump will appear in an area where they have surged, and the relatively smaller community has had trouble coping with the new arrivals. Here’s more: The Rio Grande Valley, which includes Brownsville, gives Biden a platform where illegal crossings have dropped sharply. It was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings on the U.S. border with Mexico for nine years until Del Rio, which includes Eagle Pass, overtook it in the 2022 budget year.
Del Rio was the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors last year as well, but Tucson, Arizona, began taking the top spot last summer.
Arrests for illegal crossings topped 2 million for the first time in each of the government’s last two budget years, more than double Trump’s peak year of just under 1 million in 2019. But Rio Grande Valley has turned into an exception during recent months as traffic has shifted to Arizona and California for a host of reasons.
The Rio Grande Valley’s 7,340 border arrests in January were its lowest since June 2020, down 90% from more than 81,000 in July 2021, early in Biden’s presidency.
Del Rio has gone the opposite direction, exemplified by the arrival of about 16,000 predominantly Haitian migrants in the border town of Del Rio in September 2021. Eagle Pass, an hour’s drive from Del Rio, was relatively quiet during Trump’s presidency (and before) but became a hot spot under Biden. The Del Rio sector tallied more than 71,000 arrests in December, more than the entire 2019 budget year.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:15:35 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Here’s the Guardian’s Michael Gonzalez on how Joe Biden will see a starkly different situation in Brownsville to what Donald Trump is expected to encounter in Eagle Pass: Joe Biden will travel to the US-Mexico border on Thursday amid rising concerns expressed by voters nationwide over immigration, as pressure builds on the US president to respond to alarmist rightwing claims of “invasion”, “crisis” and waves of “migrant crime”.
But when Biden arrives in Brownsville, Texas, he is likely to encounter scenes like those prevailing earlier this week in the city of almost 200,000 that lies at the eastern end of the border. Shoppers walked the streets and preparations were under way for annual binational celebrations, Charro Days and Sombrero fest, which highlight the city’s close relationship with its Mexican sister city, Matamoros.
Border patrol processing facilities in downtown Brownsville, where migrants can usually be found before or after making a formal request for asylum, and the bus station, where migrants are often heading out of town, were empty after a drop in the number of people crossing the border in the last two months.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:31:37 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Expect Joe Biden and Donald Trump to outline very different visions for dealing with undocumented migration when they appear on Texas’s border with Mexico today, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports: Joe Biden and his all-but-certain Republican challenger, Donald Trump, will make dueling visits to Texas border towns on Thursday, a rare overlap that sets the stage for an election season clash over immigration.
In Brownsville, along the Rio Grande, Biden is expected to hammer Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border security deal after Trump expressed his vocal opposition to the measure. Hundreds of miles north-west, Trump will deliver remarks from a state park in Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a showdown between the Biden administration and the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.
Hours before the president and former president arrived on the 2,000-mile stretch of border, a federal judge sided with the Biden administration and blocked a new Texas law that would give police power to arrest people suspected of entering the US unlawfully.
Trump, who Republicans appear poised to choose as their nominee for a third consecutive time, has once again made immigration a centerpiece of his presidential campaign by describing the United States under Biden as overrun by undocumented immigrants who “poisoning the blood of our country”, rhetoric that echoes white supremacists and Adolf Hitler. While in Texas, the former president is expected to lay out his plans for an immigration crackdown far beyond what he attempted in his first term.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:36:39 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump arrives in TexasDonald Trump has arrived in Texas, where he’ll be visiting the border with Mexico in the town of Eagle Pass. Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, will probably outline hard-line measures he would take to stop people from entering the country without permission, if elected. Such crossings have surged since Joe Biden took office, for a variety of reasons.
Joe Biden arrives in Brownsville, TexasJoe Biden has arrived in Brownsville, Texas, before his meetings with federal officials and a speech about border security. According to the White House, he’s expected to meet with officers from US customs and border protection, immigration and customs enforcement and other federal agencies. He will deliver remarks at 4.30pm ET, where he will likely press Congress to act on a border security compromise that Republicans are presently blocking.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:41:45 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump delivers remarks in Eagle PassDonald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border. Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country. He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US. Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.
Trump also speaks about the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was out on her morning run at the University of Georgia when authorities say a stranger dragged her into a secluded area and killed her. A Venezuelan man, identified as Jose Antonio Ibarra, has been arrested for Riley’s death. Ibarra had entered the US illegally and been allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case. Trump has blamed Joe Biden and his border policies for the Augusta University student’s fatal beating.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 18:34:53 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden delivers remarks in BrownsvilleJoe Biden is now delivering remarks in Brownsville in South Texas. Biden begins by speaking about the devastating wildfires in the Texas Panhandle that has crossed into Oklahoma. He says he stands with everyone affected by these wildfires. “When disaster strikes, there’s no red state or blue state,” he says. He then moves on to his visit to the US-Mexico border. He says he has been briefed from officials from the border patrol, immigration enforcement and asylum officers, who he says are all doing “incredible work under really tough conditions”. They desperately need more resources, he says.
Biden says that on his first day as president, he introduced a bill that he sent to Congress with a plan to fix the “broken” immigration system and to secure the border. “But no action was taken,” he says. He says that months ago, his team began a serious negotiation with a bipartisan group of senators that resulted in a “compromise bill” that he describes as the “toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen in this country”. The deal would include hiring additional border security officers after four years of border agents working overtime and making “major sacrifices”. “We need to do more,” Biden says. -- It’s time to step up and to provide them with significantly more personnel and capability, but also more immigration judges to help handle the backlog of two million [asylum] cases.The bipartisan border security deal “is a win for the American people”, he adds. -- That’s a win for the people of Texas and it’s fair for those who legitimately have a right to come here to begin with.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 18:36:55 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden calls on Trump to work together on border dealBiden says the border security bill is a truly bipartisan initiative, noting that compromise is part of the process. “That’s how democracy works. That’s how it’s supposed to.” Biden calls on senators who oppose the bill to “set politics aside and pass it on merit – not on whether it’s going to benefit one party or benefit the other party.” He calls on Donald Trump to stop telling members of Congress to block his administration. “Let’s remember who we work for, for God’s sake. We work for the American people.” -- Join me or I’ll join you in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill. We can do it together. It’s the toughest most efficient, most effective border security bill the country has ever seen. So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done?
Here’s a clip from Joe Biden’s speech in Brownsville calling on Trump to join him in telling Congress to pass the bipartisan immigration bill that passed in the Senate but has since stalled in the House. Biden described the bill as a “win for the American people” that was “derailed by partisan politics”, and urged Republicans to “show a little spine” and back the bill.
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