Immigration has displaced the economy as the star issue of the political confrontation between Republicans and Democrats. Just over eight months before the 2024 presidential elections, the two probable candidates for said elections will meet this Thursday on the border with Mexico. Former President Donald Trump goes to Eagle Pass (Texas) to denounce what he has been calling an “invasion” of immigrants. The current president, Joe Biden, will go about 500 kilometers away, to Brownsville, also in Texas, next to the Gulf of Mexico, to denounce that Republicans are boycotting his proposals to secure the border in order to blame him.
For Biden it will be his second visit to the border as president, since he went to El Paso in January of last year. The White House announced the trip this Monday after it released its weekly agenda on Sunday without that forecast appearing. He did so after information was published about Trump’s visit this Thursday. Even so, Biden has implied that it was a coincidence: “I planned it for Thursday, what I didn’t know is that my good friend is apparently going to go,” he said, referring to Trump, when asked in an ice cream parlor in New York where he stopped this Monday after giving a television interview.
“On Thursday, as you all know, President Biden will travel to Brownsville, Texas, to meet with United States Border Patrol agents, law enforcement and local leaders,” White House spokeswoman Karine said on Monday. Jean Pierre. “He will speak about the urgent need to pass the Senate’s bipartisan agreement on border security, the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades,” she added. It is one of the hot areas for irregular border crossings.
Trump’s pressures have derailed a bill that included aid to Ukraine and Israel, but also reforms to curb illegal immigration on the border with Mexico, which has broken records during Biden’s presidency. The border measures were a Republican demand to give the green light to aid to Ukraine and Israel, but when push comes to shove, they have preferred to take a step back and continue using the migratory flow as an electoral weapon.
For this reason, Biden, according to Jean-Pierre, “will reiterate his calls to Republican congressmen to stop playing politics and provide the necessary funding to increase the number of United States Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, detection technology of fentanyl and much more,” he said this Monday.
Biden is analyzing the possibility of approving a decree with some measures to make the passage of immigrants more difficult or facilitate their expulsion. When asked by journalists, the White House spokesperson did not want to anticipate either the content or the schedule of the possible signing of this hypothetical executive order. “I have nothing to say at this moment. We will have more to share as we get closer to Thursday,” she replied.
Among the measures being considered by Biden’s team is invoking the powers under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the president broad latitude to block the entry of certain immigrants if necessary. was “detrimental” to the national interest. But if the law is not changed, any decree against border crossings will likely be challenged in court.
Trump repeatedly resorted to that rule during his term, including his controversial entry ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, which Biden revoked as soon as he took office. He is now analyzing whether it can be applied when a certain number of illegal crossings is exceeded, in line with what was included in a provision of the proposed law. This rule would have activated the immediate repatriation of migrants upon exceeding 5,000 illegal daily crossings on average in a period of five days.
Jean-Pierre has insisted that no decree will be able to achieve what that law that Republicans and Democrats were negotiating would achieve and that, before Trump’s pressures, had enough support to move forward. “We think Republicans should get out of the way, not politicize this. “This is an issue that worries the American people, the majority of the American people,” he said. Democrats are trying to boomerang back against accusations about the border and immigration. “It was the toughest and fairest agreement we have ever seen. And if it had become law, it would have made a difference,” he said.
Biden is going to listen directly to border patrol agents, the spokesperson said, but she did not want to clarify whether he will also meet with immigrants. Agents, she said, “have been doing everything they can to secure the border with the resources they have,” but “they need more.”
Biden’s policy of trying to open legal pathways for orderly migration to the United States while toughening punishments against illegal pathways has not stopped the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States. The legislation allows immigrants to apply for asylum, regardless of how they arrive, and they arrive in such numbers that it overwhelms the capacity of an underfunded immigration system. That effectively allows immigrants to settle while their cases are delayed for years.
Arrests for illegal crossings fell by half in January, but December saw all-time highs.
Trump, who already made immigration the focus of his campaign in the 2016 elections, goes to Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a tough battle, with constitutional implications, that pits the federal government against that of Texas over immigration control. A caravan of followers of the former president arrived there this month in support of the governor, Gregg Abott, who has challenged Washington in his attempt to wrest immigration control from federal authorities.
Trump talks about immigrants again and again at his rallies, sometimes in a somewhat disjointed way or with lies. “They come from everywhere: from South America, Asia and Africa. Police attacked in Times Square [en Nueva York] and to the good people of South Carolina who visit Washington, where the marble columns of the monuments are full of graffiti,” he said a few days ago in South Carolina, untruthful. “It’s crazy,” she added.
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