Trump to campaign at U.S.-Mexico border as he zeroes in on hardline immigration

McAllen, Texas — Former President Donald Trump on Sunday is bringing his 2024 presidential campaign to the U.S.-Mexico border, where he is expected to tout the dramatic immigration restrictions he has vowed to enact if voters send him back to the White House.

Trump, the frontrunner to win the Republican presidential nomination, will be hosted by Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, another fierce critic of President Biden’s immigration and border policies. The campaign event will take place in Edinburg, a small city in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, one of the busiest sectors for unlawful border crossings, and a region where Republicans have made inroads with its predominantly Hispanic communities in recent years.

In recent weeks, Trump has escalated his harsh rhetoric on immigration and the scope of his promises on the issue, which some of his advisers believe partially catapulted him to victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. In one recent interview, he claimed that migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

During his presidency, Trump staged a crackdown on illegal and legal immigration, taking unprecedented actions to cut immigrant admissions, restrict access to the asylum system, build hundreds of miles of border wall and end temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including those who arrived in the U.S. as children.

But Trump has promised to take his hardline immigration agenda further if he’s elected in 2024, pledging to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, expand his travel bans, deny birthright citizenship to the American-born children of unauthorized immigrants, and reject legal immigrants with political beliefs he disagrees with. Trump has also refused to rule out reviving his infamous migrant family separation policy, which he discontinued in 2018 after widespread public outcry.

Abbott, who has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate, has also made immigration a top issue during his governorship, turning Texas into the chief adversary to Mr. Biden’s migration and border measures. 

Since Mr. Biden took office, Abbott has ordered state officials to fortify the banks of the Rio Grande with razor wire and river barriers, directed Texas troopers to arrest migrant adults on trespassing charges, and authorized the state to bus tens of thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities, mainly New York City and Chicago.

Abbott is also soon expected to sign what would be the harshest state immigration law in modern American history. The measure, known as SB4, will empower state law enforcement officials to arrest migrants on new illegal entry criminal charges, and allow state judges to issue deportation orders to suspected…