Photo: Sergio Flores Agence France-Presse Donald Trump, 77, is passing through the Texan town of Eagle Pass.
Jim Watson – Agence France-Presse at Eagle Pass and Brownsville
6:12 p.m.
- United States
The duel has begun: Joe Biden and Donald Trump, well set to face each other in the November presidential election, are organizing rival visits to the United States border with Mexico on Thursday to discuss the immigration, hot topic of the campaign.
The 81-year-old Democratic president arrived early this afternoon in Brownsville, Texas, where he will meet with Border Patrol agents and local officials, according to the White House.
At the same time, his rival Donald Trump, 77, is in the Texan town of Eagle Pass, 500 km away, from where he is due to give a speech.
The Republican continues to accuse Joe Biden of having transformed the southern border of the United States into a sieve. He insists that the Democratic leader's asylum policy has caused an unprecedented migration crisis.
“We have a very dangerous border and we are going to take care of that,” he said in a very brief statement upon his arrival in Texas.
“On Politics”
Joe Biden is going to Texas “to hear from border police agents […] what is happening on the ground,” assured the spokesperson for the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre.
The president will also give a speech and “Americans will hear him explain how Republicans preferred to play politics rather than solve problems,” she added.
Because a law on the subject, negotiated by members of both parties, was ultimately rejected by Republicans in Congress “at the request of Donald Trump,” says the spokesperson, adding that the ex-president did it “for his own political benefit.”
The White House assures that the Republican Party is deliberately sabotaging any attempt at compromise on the issue, and that Donald Trump does not intend to give Joe Biden a political victory in the middle of an election year.
Questioned about Donald Trump's visit, the president claimed not to have known that “[s]our good friend was going there” too, a sarcastic allusion to his rival.
The Trump camp, on the contrary, accuses him of imitating the tempestuous businessman.
“Invasion”
In recent years, the state of Texas has engaged in a real standoff with the administration of Joe Biden, its Republican governor Greg Abbott, a big supporter of Donald Trump, accusing the government of allowing an “invasion” of illegal migrants on the country’s southern border.
This state, the second most populous in the country, organizes its primaries for the November presidential election on Tuesday, during the big election day of “Super Tuesday”. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the favorites of their parties respectively.
Donald Trump, who had built his popularity during his first victorious campaign by promising the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico, recently used all his influence with Republican elected officials in Congress to block a text on the 'immigration.
The agreement provided, in addition to migration reform, an additional package of aid to Ukraine and Israel.
Donald Trump assures that the expulsion of migrants would be one of his priorities if he were re-elected.
The former president recently stepped up his attacks against undocumented immigrants, accusing them of “poisoning the blood” of the United States — comments that shocked his opponents.