President Biden issued a political dare to his biggest rival, former President Donald J. Trump, as the men took dueling trips to the southern border in Texas on Thursday in an effort to leverage a dominant issue of the 2024 presidential campaign.
In remarks delivered some 300 miles away, Mr. Trump highlighted crimes committed by migrants in an attempt to portray Mr. Biden as a president plunging the nation into crime and disorder.
Mr. Biden, by contrast, focused on compromise, but he also baited his rival, using a bipartisan bill that fell apart in the Senate at Mr. Trump’s urging.
“Instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me,” Mr. Biden said of the bill that had been a breakthrough after years of paralysis on one of the nation’s most intractable issues.
Mr. Biden’s push to collaborate on what he called the “toughest” border legislation in decades shows how the Democratic Party has shifted to the right on this issue.
Here’s what else to know:
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Mr. Biden arrived on Air Force One in Brownsville, Texas, a city in the Rio Grande Valley that has historically seen large influxes of migrants, and met with Border Patrol, law enforcement and asylum officers. He said it was “long past time” to fix the border and immigration system, and that message from Border Patrol agents and others involved in security was plain: They wanted more officers, more judges and more resources.
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Mr. Biden also denounced Republicans for thwarting the bipartisan immigration bill — one that he championed and they themselves had demanded — that would have resulted in a crackdown at the border.
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Mr. Trump spoke in Eagle Pass, which has become a common backdrop for politicians who want to show they are tough on immigration. He was met there by Gov. Greg Abbott and Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the main union for Border Patrol agents, and began his remarks by commending Mr. Abbott on his efforts on the border. “The United States is being overrun,” Mr. Trump said, as he criticized Mr. Biden’s border policies and “what he has done to our country.”
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Mr. Trump also focused on the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student found dead in Georgia, blaming it on Mr. Biden. The man charged with killing her is an immigrant from Venezuela who crossed the border illegally, and her death has become a political flashpoint.
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Record numbers of migrants have crossed into the United States during the Biden administration, a surge that Mr. Trump and other Republicans have used to attack the president as weak on the border.