President Joe Biden will visit the US-Mexico border in Texas on Thursday, the White House announced, in the Democrat’s latest bid to regain control over soaring illegal immigration ahead of the November election.
Biden will go to Brownsville, Texas, to meet with federal border patrol agents and “reiterate his calls for congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and to provide the funding needed” to protect the porous border, a White House official said Monday.
Record numbers of migrants have crossed the border under Biden, turning the issue into a major political liability in his reelection campaign.
Likely opponent Donald Trump has put opposition to illegal migration at the center of his own campaign, stirring up fierce anti-immigrant sentiments with often violent rhetoric.
Trump will also be visiting the Texas border on Thursday, according to US media.
Republicans blame Biden’s policies favoring the right to asylum for the flow of migrants, while the White House says that Trump’s party is deliberately sabotaging a bipartisan attempt to find a solution.
The latest bill, which has stalled in the Senate after the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives pledged to torpedo it, would be “toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades,” the White House official said.
