Dueling trips to the US-Mexico border by the current and former president as they battle each other for a second term.
Perhaps no city along Texas’s border with Mexico has better epitomized what can happen when local leaders and volunteers band together to help the thousands of men, women and children seeking a new life in the United States than Brownsville.
The Gulf Coast port city is nestled within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection sector that has long seen the highest levels of migration. But even when border crossings surge, the shocks are quietly absorbed. Residents donate supplies and help orient the new arrivals on how to navigate their way to their final destinations.
Three hundred miles upriver, Eagle Pass offers a tale of a far different border city. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has transformed the riverfront community into a military front line on immigration. Razor wire and rusted shipping containers warn migrants to stay away. And military trucks and rifle-carrying troops occupy the city’s biggest park.
As President Biden and Republican contender Donald Trump head to Texas on Thursday, the cities each has chosen to plant their flag on immigration are a study of contrasts. While both hug the Rio Grande, that’s about where the similarities end. Their common origin stories — riverfront military garrisons that grew into bicultural communities — have each diverged in ways that reflect the dynamics of this contested and polemical region.
“This place for better or worse may be the fulcrum for who becomes the next president,” said former Democratic Texas state representative Poncho Nevarez, speaking of his birth city of Eagle Pass. “It’s here where we’ll find out if Biden stays president or if Trump becomes president again.”
Biden will visit Brownsville, a Democratic stronghold in sync with the party’s traditional approach to immigration, balancing border security with humanitarian considerations…
…In both Eagle Pass and Brownsville, border crossings have declined thus far in 2024. The governor took credit, but Mexico has also stepped up aggressive tactics to prevent migrants from reaching its northern border.
Nevertheless, Eagle Pass’s association with “border chaos” has stuck, making it the perfect place for Trump, a candidate who thrives on disorder, to make his stand, said Poncho Nevárez, a former Democratic Texas state representative.
“They benefit from this psychosis of the locals who say they are overwhelmed,” he said. “Trump sees that if there is going to be a pitched battle on this issue that he wants to be at the flash point.”
Neither border city has ever seen much result from a presidential or candidate visit, local leaders said. They expect less so in a hotly contested election year.
“I think people should see these visits the way border communities see them: ‘It’s campaign season, so here come the politicians,’” said Tami Goodlette, legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project’s Beyond Borders program. “We should all be as skeptical of them as border communities are.”
