Trump and Biden at the border: Two visits – different messages

Migration has played a central role in the US election campaign: US President Biden and his potential challenger Trump made parallel visits to the Mexican border to send very different messages..

This is the sound of the conflict: In Eagle Pass, Texas, Donald Trump introduced a new term in campaign rhetoric: “Biden Migrant Crime.”

This is what the willingness to compromise looks like: 500 kilometers away, Joe Biden extended his hand: “Let's try this together,” the inaugural address to Trump in Brownsville, Texas: “Tell your party friends in Congress to support a bipartisan border. Defense law voices!”

It represents a package of measures for border security that both parties negotiated in the Senate and which have now been blocked by Republicans in the House of Representatives, presumably at Trump's behest.

Familiar Trump rhetoric

During his first visit to the border in more than a year, Biden continued to send money to the opposition, but his appearance was at least about a solution, about cooperation in the service of the cause.

With Trump, on the other hand, everything revolved around the usual horror scenes: the people who reach the United States through the Mexican border come from prisons and insane asylums, and the familiar Trump rhetoric says that they are terrorists. To illustrate this, he took a tragedy that gets under the skin of Americans these days: the death of 22-year-old student Laegan Riley from Georgia, who was killed — presumably — by a Venezuelan who had crossed the border illegally at El. He had come to Paso a year and a half ago.

Biden would never mention Riley by name, Trump says, calling his killer a “monster.”.

Trump brought his rival's standard nickname, “Crook Joe Biden,” into the country the crooked Biden, the “murderer.” Calculations suggest that such an increase would bring more votes than a settlement-based compromise.

Law does not have a majority

Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, finds it frustrating. He was one of the authors of the Prohibited Act. Trump has no interest in de-escalating the situation at the border, Murphy told CNN. The ongoing confusion gives him more political leverage.

So bipartisan legislation that would have given the president the power to enforce border security, expedited asylum procedures and even close the border entirely if necessary has yet to find a majority. For now, Biden's only option is to issue several planned measures by executive order.

The need for action can be backed up by statistics: Last year, more than two million people crossed the southern border into the United States illegally. Under Trump it has never been more than 800,000 annually.