Biden, Trump Compete For Attention At Mexico Border
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – U.S. President Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump have made competing visits to the troubled U.S. border with Mexico, to each pledge a crackdown on “illegal immigration” after record numbers of desperate men, women and children entered the nation seeking the “American Dream.”
Both men visited separate Texas state border towns 300 miles (480 kilometers) apart on Thursday, blaming each other for a surge in illegal immigration ahead of the presidential elections in November.
They attempted to take the offensive on an issue that analysts believe will be a crucial theme in this year’s presidential contest, despite Europe’s bloodiest conflict thousands of miles away in Ukraine and a Middle East crisis needing U.S. leadership.
With Trump leading in the polls, Biden extended an olive branch of sorts to him during remarks in the city of Brownsville, urging him to join efforts to get Congress to pass a bipartisan border agreement.
“Join me – or I’ll join you – in telling Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill,” Biden said, addressing Trump directly. “We can do this together.”
His words reverberated while Trump, who has condemned Biden for halting further construction of his border wall, was conducting a made-for-tv visit to Eagle Pass to show he is tough on immigration.
Trump stood near a makeshift wall of razor wire to describe the border crisis. “It’s a military operation,” he said after touring Shelby Park, where Governor Greg Abbott sent the Texas National Guard to police the border.
‘MIGRANTS SEEM WARRIORS’
Trump said that the migrants “look like warriors to me,” adding that “something’s going on. It’s bad.”
He highlighted crimes committed by migrants that he suggested increased during Biden’s administration.
Trump condemned the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old found dead on the campus of the University of Georgia in the U.S. college town of Athens. The man charged in her killing is a migrant from Venezuela who crossed the southern border in September 2022.
Critics of Trump counter that border authorities who worked for Trump have said most migrants who cross the border are “vulnerable families fleeing poverty and violence” rather than criminals.
Yet Trump has made clear many are people without papers and has noted that several were on a terrorism list. He seeks an expansion of his anti-immigration policies if he returns to power in 2025.
Trump suggested mass deportations and building camps in the United States to detain undocumented immigrants. He also claimed that asylum applications could be rejected as migrants could carry infections like tuberculosis, though his critics would argue medical staff could examine them.
The U.S. Border Patrol had nearly 250,000 encounters with migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico in December 2023, said the respected Pew Research Center, citing government statistics. “That was the highest monthly total on record, easily eclipsing the previous peak of about 224,000 encounters in May 2022,” the Center said.
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