Biden seeks to shift border from vulnerability to line of attack on Trump

President Biden’s visit to the border on Thursday is part of an effort to go on offense against former President Trump, and to turn a political liability into a line of attack against Republicans.

The Biden campaign sees Trump’s hand in getting Republicans to kill a bipartisan proposal to bolster resources at the southern border as a major messaging gift for them.

They’re seeking to blame Trump for the lack of action at the border, while tying the former president and his party to Washington’s dysfunction.

“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden said earlier this month.

There are plenty of reasons to question whether Biden can succeed in the border effort.

Polling has shown voters trust Trump on immigration more than Biden, and that a sizable number of Americans think it is a pressing issue.

The arrest of an undocumented immigrant as a suspect in the death of a Georgia college student has further inflamed tensions on the issue.

Trump, who will also be in Texas on Thursday for his own visit to the border, is almost certain to blame Biden for the surge of migrants into the United States and tie the death of Georgia student Laken Riley directly to Biden’s policies.

Nonetheless, a number of Democrats argue Biden is right to take on Trump over the issue.

“When you’ve got a vulnerability, you should run towards it. And they have something to sell because there was this bipartisan border deal that would have made a world of difference, and it was stopped because it was not good for Donald Trump. And voters need to know that,” said Jim Kessler, vice president of policy for the left-center think tank Third Way.

Biden will meet with officials in Brownsville, Texas, and is expected to use the backdrop to apply additional pressure on congressional Republicans to pass the bipartisan border proposal.

Ahead of the trip, Biden had been wrestling with whether to take executive action on how asylum claims are handled at the southern border, a move that would take some of the blame off of him for the influx of migrants but also anger progressives and likely be hit with legal challenges.

Biden’s efforts to turn the border issue on Trump and Republicans may face an uphill battle.

A Gallup poll published Tuesday found 28 percent of Americans view immigration as the most important problem facing the United States, topping other areas of concern such as inflation, which came in at 11 percent.

A Jan. 31 Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey of voters in seven swing states found 61 percent said Biden was at least somewhat responsible for the surge of migration at the southern border, and 52 percent of respondents said they trusted Trump over Biden on immigration.

Stewart Verdery, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, was skeptical of the Biden team’s efforts.

“On the political level, the administration is fooling themselves if they think swing voters are going to remember some bill that appeared for three days and died as opposed to the visuals of hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the country every month, including the Georgia murderer — the only way to ease their political pain is to really change policies at the border,” he said.

The Associated Press reported in January there were more than 3 million cases pending in immigration courts, and there were record-setting levels of apprehensions at the southern border in late 2023.

Trump’s campaign has claimed Biden’s trip to the border is a “last-minute, insincere attempt” to counter the former president’s visit to Texas.

The Biden campaign dismissed Trump’s trip to the border as a photo op, attacking the former president for his opposition to the border deal and for the extreme proposals he’s laid out for a potential second term.

Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if reelected, and he has used incendiary rhetoric in describing the flow of migrants. He has said migrants who come into the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” language that has drawn comparisons to Nazi Germany, and on Saturday he claimed some individuals entering the U.S. spoke languages “nobody has even heard of.”

Some Democrats argued Biden’s position on the border is better than it has been in recent months.

“The fact that Republicans killed the conservative border bill, Democrats are in a better spot in this debate in a long time,” said Ivan Zapien, former executive director at the Hispanic Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee. 

“I think the message: We have a problem at the border, and we are trying to solve it, and the other side is not interested in solving it, is as strong as I can remember,” he added. “Of course, things will happen to challenge that. But the message frame is as strong as I have seen.”