On the banks of the same Rio Grande, but 480km apart, US President Joe Biden and former US president Donald Trump on Thursday surveyed the US-Mexico border and tussled from a distance over who is to blame for the nation’s broken immigration system and how to fix it.
Immigration has emerged as a central issue in this year’s presidential campaign, which is widely expected to be a Biden-Trump rematch, and each man is seeking to use the border problems to his own political advantage.
Their itineraries were remarkably similar: They arrived in Texas within half an hour of one another. Each chose an optimal location from which to make his point, got a briefing on operations and issues, walked along the scrub brush by the Rio Grande and spoke directly to the public. Their remarks even overlapped in time for a bit.
Photo: AP
However, that is where the parallels ended.
Biden sought to spotlight the necessity of a bipartisan border security bill and asked the Republican frontrunner to join him in supporting a congressional push for more funding and tighter restrictions.
“Here’s what I would say to Mr Trump,” Biden said. “Instead of playing politics with the issue, join me, or I’ll join you in telling the Congress to pass this bill. You know and I know it’s the toughest, most efficient, most effective border security bill this country’s ever seen.”
Photo: AFP
Biden went to the Rio Grande Valley city of Brownsville.
He walked along the Rio Grande and received a lengthy briefing from US Department of Homeland Security officials, who spoke about what they needed to do their jobs effectively — more money to hire more officers along the border and for use across the asylum process to help clear out massive backlogs.
“I want the American people to know what we’re trying to get done,” Biden said. “We can’t afford not to do this.”
Trump traveled to Eagle Pass in the corridor that is seeing the largest number of migrant crossings.
He met with Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas National Guard soldiers who have commandeered a local park and put up razor wire fencing at the river’s edge to keep migrants from crossing illegally.
Looking out over the river through the razor wire, Trump raised his fist and waved and shouted to people on the Mexico side, who waved back.
He said that people seeking to enter illegally were criminals and some were terrorists.
“They’re being let into our country and it’s horrible,” Trump said. “It’s horrible.”
Trump also brought up the killing of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia recently.
The suspect is a Venezuelan migrant.
“Crooked Joe has the blood of countless innocent victims,” Trump said. “It’s so many stories to tell, so many horrible stories.”
As the politicians traded barbs over who was to blame, migrants were still making the journey into the US.
Trump stood on a concrete boat launch where a day earlier, a man had been pulled from the river, drowned, trying to cross.
In Brownsville where Biden spoke, a group of migrants had crossed illegally overnight.
Across the border from Brownsville, in Matamoros, makeshift shelters dotted the ground for migrants who hope to enter the US.
“I come completely alone on this journey, I have been on this journey for about six months and the only important thing I have in my life are my mom, my little sister and nobody else,” Joseph Elian Gutierrez Castillo, a Nicaraguan migrant, said in Spanish. “With God’s favor, everything will go well.”
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