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Vice President Kamala Harris went to the U.S.-Mexico border quickly after she and President Biden took workplace, despite the fact that she had characterised such visits as empty politics simply weeks earlier than. President Barack Obama additionally toured the border throughout his time within the White Home, although he got here to see the journeys as little greater than picture ops.
Donald J. Trump used the border when he was president to impress help for his anti-immigration insurance policies, even signing his identify on his “massive, stunning wall” with a Sharpie pen.
Because the immigration debate grows more and more polarized, a visit alongside the two,000-mile frontier has develop into a obligatory little bit of political theater for leaders who need to present they care about immigration. The imagery on the border — the wall, the Border Patrol officers, the crowded detention amenities — serves as a potent backdrop for drawing consideration to the disaster or, more and more, for seizing on the problem to assault political opponents.
On Thursday, each of these elements can be at play when President Biden and Mr. Trump make dueling journeys to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mr. Trump will journey to Eagle Move, Texas, the place he’ll discuss crimes dedicated by migrants and blame Mr. Biden for surging crossings on the border. Mr. Biden, greater than 300 miles away in Brownsville, plans to talk with border brokers and name out Home Republicans who took their cue from Mr. Trump and thwarted a bipartisan border invoice that will have cracked down on illegal migration.
“It’s a comparatively new phenomenon, the place you go and make a giant deal of the border on the border,” mentioned Tevi Troy, a presidential historian. “So long as this stays a difficulty, we’re going to have presidents who both go to make a political level or in the event that they don’t go, are pressured to take action.”
Immigration has develop into one in all Mr. Biden’s greatest political liabilities as hundreds of thousands of migrants overwhelm the underfunded and underresourced system, one thing that Republicans like Mr. Trump are eager to focus on. A Gallup ballot launched on Tuesday discovered that People are almost certainly to call immigration as an important downside within the nation.
“This can be a Hail Mary by Biden,” mentioned Brandon Judd, president of the Nationwide Border Patrol Council, the primary union for Border Patrol brokers. Mr. Judd, who has lengthy supported Mr. Trump, will be part of the previous president in Eagle Move on Thursday. Nonetheless, he mentioned, he was in favor of the border invoice in Congress that Mr. Biden supported and Mr. Trump opposed.
Immigration is on the middle of Mr. Trump’s candidacy for president and plenty of Republicans, particularly within the Home, could be reluctant to present an election-year win to Mr. Biden on a difficulty that has given them a robust line of criticism towards the White Home.
The politics of the border weren’t at all times so divisive. In 1971, Pat Nixon, then the primary woman, captured headlines when she greeted Mexican kids and complained about fencing whereas visiting a park alongside the border in San Diego.
A long time later, President George W. Bush traveled to a Border Patrol put up in New Mexico to rally help for his try to overhaul the nation’s immigration coverage. Whereas the Senate at that time supported a invoice that included a path to eventual citizenship for a lot of unlawful immigrants, the Home emphasised the necessity for border safety.
Mr. Obama confronted starker divisions. In 2011, he made a speech in El Paso close by of the border to push for legalization legal guidelines, in a nod to Latino voters who could be essential within the 2012 election. However in 2014, as a file variety of unaccompanied minors crossed the border, Mr. Obama confronted relentless calls to go to the border, which he dismissed.
“I’m not involved in picture ops,” Mr. Obama mentioned.
Mr. Trump was. He visited the border a number of occasions throughout his presidency and may need gone extra if not for the pandemic.
Virtually as quickly as Mr. Biden got here into workplace, he and Ms. Harris confronted calls for by Republicans who mentioned they need to go to the border and see the disaster for themselves. Each of them have made the journey to El Paso; Ms. Harris in June 2021 and Mr. Biden in January 2023.
Each of them have additionally confronted criticism. Republicans took Ms. Harris to job for going to El Paso as a substitute of the decrease Rio Grande Valley, thought of the epicenter of the surge in migration. Progressive Democrats mentioned Mr. Biden ought to have spoken on to migrants.
Gil Kerlikowske, the commissioner of Customs and Border Safety throughout the Obama administration, mentioned presidents and different high officers can present that they prioritize the border by visiting. However he additionally acknowledged that such visits could also be extra for political acquire.
“It’s so politically delicate proper now,” Mr. Kerlikowske mentioned. “To have them come and look at the work and the difficulties that Customs and Border Safety specifically faces on the border tells you that this can be, if not No. 1, then definitely one or two within the subjects of this presidential election cycle.”
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