On a day made for split-screens and picture-in-picture, former President Donald Trump and President Biden made near-simultaneous trips to Texas Thursday and offered very different prescriptions for the migrant crisis that has overwhelmed authorities at the US-Mexico border.
On a day made for split screens and picture-in-picture, former President Donald Trump and President Biden made near-simultaneous trips to Texas Thursday and offered very different prescriptions for the migrant crisis that has overwhelmed authorities at the US-Mexico border.
In Eagle Pass, ground zero for the most recent surge, Trump decried what he called a “Joe Biden invasion” of American territory.
In Brownsville, 325 miles to the southeast, Biden, 81, demanded Republicans in Congress “show a little spine” and approve a bipartisan supplemental spending bill that he said offered “more resources” to address the crisis.
Trump, who arrived at his destination earlier in the day, was given a tour of the area by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and members of the Texas National Guard, who showed off razor wire put up at a local park to deter migrants from crossing the Rio Grande into America.
“This is like a war,” Trump said before calling out a wave of high-profile crimes by migrants across America — including the recent murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student, by a Venezuelan national who was charged by New York officials with child endangerment, but released before Immigration and Customs Enforcement could send him back home.
Trump, 77, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, said he had spoken to Riley’s parents and called her the “best nursing student there was” — but predicted that Biden would never dare to mention her name.
The 45th president also vowed he would reinstate hard-line border policies that were scrapped by his successor — including Title 42, which provided for rapid removal of asylum-seekers; and the Remain in Mexico policy, which required migrants to wait south of the border for their claims of persecution to be adjudicated.
“This is a Biden invasion over the past three years,” Trump said.
