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U.S. President Joe Biden and former U.S. President Donald Trump visited the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday. While Biden urged Congress to reconsider a bipartisan immigration bill that fell apart in the Senate, Trump focused on crimes committed by migrants.
Immigration is expected to be a key issue in the November presidential election as tens of thousands of migrants have crossed into the United States without authorization each week.
Biden went to Brownsville, Texas, a region where illegal crossings into the United States have fallen sharply in recent years and residents have banded together to help migrants assimilate into life in the United States.
The president was briefed on the situation at the border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He then made brief remarks to members of the media.
"They desperately need more resources," Biden said.
Biden blamed Republican lawmakers who rejected a bipartisan bill that would have toughened immigration policies and provided funding for more border agents. Trump had urged them not to pass any bill that did not meet all of their demands.
"The bipartisan border security deal is a win for the American people. And it's a win for the people of Texas and it's fair for those who legitimately have a right to come here to begin with," Biden said.
Biden wants Congress to approve more funding for border agents and asylum officers and may sign an executive order to impose more controls to close the border if Congress does not act. But an executive order does not have the same force of law as legislation approved by Congress and almost certainly would be challenged in lawsuits by pro-immigration groups.
He also issued a political dare to Trump.
"Instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me or I'll join you in telling Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill. ... You know and I know it's the toughest, most efficient, most effective border security bill this country's ever seen.
"So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don't we just get together and get it done? ... We work for the American people, not the Democratic Party, the Republican Party. We work for the American people," Biden said.
The president did not take questions.
Trump says US 'overrun'
Trump visited Eagle Pass, Texas, about 500 kilometers (311 miles) away, where Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has erected several types of barriers, including razor wire and rusted shipping containers, to curb the influx of migrants crossing the Rio Grande.
"This is a Biden invasion over the past three years," Trump said, criticizing Biden's plans.
Trump promised to bring back the tough immigration policies he put in place during his administration, like "Remain in Mexico," which mandated that migrants stay in Mexico until their immigration cases in the U.S. were decided.
Trump said Biden is responsible for the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the country illegally is accused of killing her.
"The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime," Trump said.
Joshua Blank, research director at the Texas Politics Project at The University of Texas at Austin, told VOA that tying migration to crime is misleading.
"All studies that have been done rigorously and seriously show that immigrants and even undocumented immigrants commit crimes at much, much lower rates than U.S. citizens. And that the issue of crime among migrant people is relatively minimal," he said.
As president from 2017 to early 2021, Trump sought to build a border wall and claimed Mexico would pay for it.
A portion of a wall was built on his watch, but Congress never gave Trump as much money as he wanted for the project and Mexico paid none of it.
At another point, Trump separated parents from their children as they tried to cross into the United States but abandoned the policy amid widespread outcries.
Lawmakers debate issue for years
For years, immigration policy has been an issue that Washington lawmakers debate but have been unable to resolve.
Republicans generally favor tougher rules to curb migrants from entering the U.S. while Democrats have often adopted a more nuanced approach, such as calling for permanent stay-in-the-U.S. rights for young adults who were brought into the U.S. illegally years ago by their migrant parents.
Most recently, three U.S. senators - a Democrat, a Republican and an independent - negotiated for months to draft new migration controls that would have been the toughest in years and won Biden's support, even as progressive Democrats complained it was something akin to what Trump would have proposed.
Trump opposed it, saying it was not tough enough and pushed Republicans to oppose it, which they did in defeating it in the Senate. Democratic critics said Republicans supporting Trump's bid for another White House term rejected the proposal, so as not to hand Biden an election-year victory on the contentious issue.
Even as that legislative effort was defeated, House Speaker Mike Johnson, who leads the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives, has demanded that U.S.-Mexico border immigration controls be added to a $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine before he will put the package to a vote in the full House chamber.
Trump is close to securing the Republican presidential nomination for the third straight election cycle and has turned his attacks on Biden, with a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showing immigration is the main concern for many voters and that Biden is vulnerable on the issue.
House Republicans, by a single-vote margin, recently impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden's immigration chief, claiming that he has left the border in chaos and ignored existing immigration restraints.
A Senate trial is expected soon, but with Democrats controlling the chamber, Mayorkas' conviction and removal from office are highly unlikely.
Anita Powell contributed to this report.