Biden to visit Texas-Mexico border Thursday. Will he change the vexing issue's narrative?

President Joe Biden will make his second trip to the Texas-Mexico border since taking office when he visits Brownsville on Thursday and meets with front-line immigration officials and perhaps will try to reframe the narrative on an issue that has become an albatross on his administration.

The presidential visit will offer a split-screen moment as former President Donald Trump is expected to have a campaign appearance Thursday upriver from Brownsville in Eagle Pass, which for months has been ground zero for the polarizing debate over immigration and border security. Both visits underscore the importance that border security will have in presidential politics, as well as South Texas' emergence as a political battleground as Republicans seek to cement recent gains in a region that has long been dominated by Democrats.

"The (border) has become this sort of easy boogie monster that is sort of all things to all people," said Alvaro Corral, a political science professor at the Brownsville campus of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. "The Valley, like everywhere else, is politically polarized. I think the average person is pro border enforcement, for sensible and reasonable policies. But they are not OK with the recent (installation of) barbed wire and buoys. I think that seems to be a step too far."

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Since Biden ousted Trump from the White House in 2020, the southern border has seen a record surge in unauthorized crossings. And Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been the loudest voice in condemning the Biden administration's rollbacks in border policies from the hard-line stance that marked the Trump years.

On the social media platform X, after Biden's upcoming Texas visit was announced, Abbott posted images of state-initiated border enforcement actions, which are part of the state's $11 billion Operation Lone Star, to contrast with what the governor said is Biden's inaction.

"The Texas National Guard is adding more miles of barriers that deny illegal entry," Abbott wrote in a post that carried an image of Guard soldiers spooling out coiled razor wire around a metal fence. "A federal law requires the Biden Admin. to do this — but they aren’t. So Texas is building the barrier."

When Biden visited the Texas-Mexico border in January 2023, Abbott greeted him at the airport and handed him a letter blaming him for an "out-of-control immigration crisis."

"This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted," Abbott said in the letter. "Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings. Texans are paying an especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you if given the chance."

State Rep. Armando Martinez, a Democrat from the border city of Weslaco, said Biden should spend some of his time in the Rio Grande Valley highlighting such achievements as the 2021 infrastructure law that so far has sent about $1.2 billion to South Texas to build and improve highways and water systems and to extend broadband's reach to rural communities.

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"We hope that a lot of the Democrats will come and show him what the great things about the Valley are, in contrast to a governor that I wish would put more emphasis as much as he does on fighting with the federal government," Martinez said.

Abbott "has spent a lot of money on building a wall that still has not been built," Martinez added. "But he has not used that money effectively for things that are important to people like saving their businesses, applying it towards infrastructure and drainage, and things that really affect the Rio Grande Valley the most. And that's what we want to see."

But political polling suggests Abbott's approach to border and immigration policy has proved more effective than Biden's, especially in Texas. A poll released this month by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas showed 66% of respondents approve of using the National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers for border security.

About as many support Texas' construction of border barriers like the ones built during the Trump administration, which Biden has halted except in limited cases.

Adrienne Peña-Garza, the chairwoman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, said Abbott's border policies have proved effective. And she said she expects voters in South Texas to reward Republican candidates as a result.

She said that the dueling visits by Biden and Trump, who is expected to clinch the Republican nomination for president, will draw added attention to what she calls "the crisis at the border."

"President Trump has visited South Texas on many occasions, and he's always welcome," Peña-Garza said. "Biden is now coming when the election is about to take place. I hope it's a genuine desire, but I'm fairly skeptical that he's actually going to do anything about the crisis at the border."

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign's national press secretary, slammed Biden's visit in a statement, arguing that he's not going to solve the border problem. Instead, she said, Biden is heading to the border because he "is losing terribly."

"Americans know Biden is single-handedly responsible for the worst immigration crisis in history," Leavitt said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden plans to discuss "the urgent need" to pass border security legislation during his visit to Texas. Legislation negotiated by a team of Democratic and Republican senators stalled after Trump urged GOP members to block it to avoid giving Biden a much-needed political victory.

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The measure proposes to give the Biden administration power to shut down the border to migrants crossing illegally when crossings exceed a daily average of 4,000 in any one-week period.

Corral, the UTRGV professor, said the collapse of the legislation to address immigration and the border has given Biden an opportunity to play offense on an issue that has dogged his three years in office.

"I think it has actually given him a bit of fresh air and a new angle that the Biden administration and Biden campaign were desperate for," Corral said. "I think they see that window of opportunity and are very much walking through it."

This report contains material from USA TODAY White House correspondent Joey Garrison.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Why Joe Biden and Donald Trump are visiting the Texas-Mexico border