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As the 2024 US presidential race approaches its final stretch, the Republican candidate announced on Wednesday that he will be in Texas on the same day this week as his Democratic rival.
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to arrive in Austin on Friday, where he will discuss border security and immigrant crime at a 12:30 p.m. news conference at a private jet terminal in East Austin, his campaign said.
News of Trump’s visit comes a day after Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she would hold a rally in Houston on Friday with US Representative Colin Allred, who is running for US Senate. The location of Harris’ rally has not yet been announced, but it is scheduled to take place between 3 and 8 p.m. on Friday, according to the Democratic National Committee’s event page.
This will be Trump’s first trip to Austin since May 2022, when he spoke at the Austin Convention Center as part of his American Freedom Tour.
After Trump’s press conference, he is scheduled to appear on the radio show “The Joe Rogan Experience.” According to Politico, Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship and this will be Trump’s first appearance on the artist’s show.
Trump has often criticized Harris and President Joe Biden’s policies on immigration and border security, and said communities are “devastated by immigrant crime.”
On Harris’ first visit to the southern border in Arizona last month, she said her administration would pursue more severe criminal charges against immigrants who repeatedly enter the country illegally and they would be barred from re-entering for five years.
Meanwhile, Trump said he would reinstate the Remain in Mexico program, which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their immigration court date. He also said he plans to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants, a promise he made during his first administration that was not kept.
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Public polls have consistently shown Harris trailing Trump by several percentage points in Texas. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
According to FiveThirtyEight polling data, updated Wednesday, Trump leads in Texas by 6.6 percentage points.
Disclosure: Politico has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in Tribune journalism. Find a full list of them here.
