The politics behind the dueling between Trump and Biden stops

Americans will get their first look at the likely presidential rematch coming this fall as President Biden and Donald J. Trump make dueling visits to the Texas border on Thursday, a rare convergence on the campaign trail that shows how volatile and powerful a political issue immigration is. has already become the 2024 race.

For Mr. Trump, the border is a familiar backdrop and almost represents the background music of his candidacy as he warns of a nation moving out of reach and an “invasion” that he vows to stop. For Mr Biden, immigration represents a major vulnerability as border crossings reached a record high in late 2023 and images of mass migration and its consequences have become fixtures in the news.

Republicans have long had a political advantage on this issue, with the Republican Party’s advantage growing even greater recently. According to the NBC News poll at the time, Trump gained as much as 16 percentage points more confidence on immigration in the fall of 2020. That margin has more than doubled to 35 percentage points from January – the biggest advantage either Mr Biden or Mr Trump had on any of the nine issues tested.

But Biden allies believe that the recent decision by Republican congressional leaders — at Mr. Trump’s urging — to abandon a potential bipartisan border deal has given the party a rare opening to reduce that deficit. The package would have made asylum claims more difficult, expanded detention capacity, expanded fentanyl screening and paid for more border guards.

Democrats hope they can draw attention to the package’s failure and contrast Biden’s push for bipartisanship with Trump’s belligerence.

“Donald Trump doesn’t want a solution,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a top Biden surrogate, said in a phone call arranged by the Biden campaign before the trip to Texas. “He wants a campaign slogan.”

Mr. Biden himself has said he would like to implement stricter policies made possible by the legislation. “If that bill were the law today, I would close the border now,” he said last month. Republicans in Congress have called on Mr. Biden to do this through executive powers.

The more immediate goal for Democrats is for Republicans to take at least some of the blame for a border situation that even Mr. Biden himself described as “in chaos” at a fundraiser in California last week. Border crossings set a monthly record from almost 250,000 in December.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are visiting border towns in Texas, hundreds of miles apart. Mr. Biden is headed to the Brownsville region and Mr. Trump will be in Eagle Pass, where Greg Abbott, the Republican governor, has clashed with federal officials over border security measures. Mr. Trump will later join Fox News host Sean Hannity in Eagle Pass for a program airing Thursday evening.

Mr. Trump was the first to announce his trip and Mr. Biden followed, although the president said Monday he did not know his predecessor would be there. “What I didn’t know is that my good friend is apparently going,” he said.

Biden is not expected to announce any new actions on Thursday, instead blaming Republicans in Congress — and Trump — for the failed border package.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, said in an interview that Democrats are gravely mistaken “if they think the collapse of this one deal will somehow change the entire paradigm of immigration voting.”

“Two things can be true at the same time: Republicans need to get their shit together, he said, using a word more colorful than stuff, and change the laws that need to be changed. And it is also true that the root of the problem is Biden’s policies.”

Mr. Crenshaw pointed to the softer actions and stance Mr. Biden took when he took office, including rolling back some of Trump’s executive orders. “It just feels opportunistic unless he makes a big announcement,” he said of a Biden border visit.

For Mr. Trump, the flow of migrants across the border has been a haunting issue from his first day as a presidential candidate in 2015, when he accused Mexico of sending drugs, criminals and rapists across the border into America.

More recently, Trump has targeted a 26-year-old immigrant from Venezuela who was arrested in Georgia for the murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student. She was found dead on a forest path, and her death has become the latest flashpoint over crime and immigration.

The suspect, who Mr. Trump has called a “savage monster,” had previously been arrested by Border Patrol in September 2022 for illegal crossing and was released with temporary permission to remain. In August, he was arrested again in New York City. Mr Trump has used the case to renew his call for the “largest deportation operation” in history.

Trump’s rhetoric on immigration was especially dark. He has said that those who enter the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of the nation.” The phrase was widely criticized, partly for its echoes of the language of twentieth-century autocrats, but was well received by the Republican primaries. CBS survey in January, it emerged that 82 percent of Republicans agreed with the idea.

Interviews with voters in the early primaries and public polling show that immigration is a critically important issue for Republicans. In South Carolina, this was considered the most important issue for 36 percent of voters – even higher than the economy. It was a close second in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to exit and entry polls.

After the 2022 midterm elections, Democratic strategists working on House races said internal research showed it was important for Democrats to directly address vulnerable areas — at the time that was inflation and the economy — to show voters that they empathize. Now, they said, the same approach should apply to immigration.

The recent special election for a House of Representatives seat near New York City was a test case, as internal Republican polls showed that 45 percent of voters viewed immigration as the most important issue — and the Democrat still won. However, there were plenty of extenuating circumstances. The reason the seat was open at all stemmed from the historic expulsion of a scandal-plagued Republican former congressman, George Santos.

Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who represents El Paso and is also national co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, said in an interview that it was clear that immigration would be “absolutely a very powerful political issue” in 2024.

“I hope the American public sees that it is Republicans who refused to find solutions,” she said.

The position of Ms. Escobar, who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, highlights the high tightrope Mr. Biden must walk on this issue in order not to alienate the Democratic base. Ms. Escobar herself opposed the border package, saying it gave away too much to Republicans.