“CRIME SCENE”
More than 2.4 million migrants crossed the southern US border in 2023 alone, largely from Central America and Venezuela as they flee poverty, violence and disasters exacerbated by climate change.
For Trump, 77, a hardline anti-immigration stance has been central to his political identity for years, and he has pledged the biggest-ever US deportation program if he returns to the White House.
Trump’s campaign described the border as a “crime scene”.
“He will outline his plan to put America first and secure the border immediately upon taking office,” during his visit, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
The split-screen moment less than eight months before Americans go to the polls will highlight the candidates’ radically different visions of the situation at the US-Mexican border.
Biden’s trip to Brownsville will be aimed at showing how his border measures are working, in an area where so-called migrant “encounters” dipped by nearly a quarter in January.
By contrast, Trump is travelling to a town where Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott has taken military control of an area along the Rio Grande River that marks the border, sparking a standoff with the federal government.
Populist Trump has also stepped up his rhetoric against migrants, saying at a Conservative event at the weekend that they were “killing our people, they’re killing our country”.