Bernd Debusmann Jr
US Reporter

Ahead of Biden and Trump's visits to the border, a US federal judge has temporarily blocked Texas from implementing SB4, a highly controversial state law that will make border crossings illegal and punishable with jail time.

If implemented, the law would be one of the toughest immigration laws passed by any US state in modern history. It would allow local and state police officers to stop and arrest anyone suspected of having crossed the border illegally, except in schools and hospitals.

Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, previously said it would "stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas".

The law, however, has faced legal challenges from the immigrant advocacy groups and the Department of Justice, which argued that it is the federal government - rather than individual states - that has jurisdiction over immigration matters.

Today, US District Judge David Ezra agreed, writing that legal precedent affirms "that states may not exercise immigration enforcement power except as authorized by the federal government".

He added that it "conflicts with key provisions of federal immigration law, to the detriment of the United States’ foreign relations and treaty obligations".

The law was slated to go into effect next Tuesday, 5 March.

Mike Wendling
Reporting from Chicago

Image source, Getty Images

Nearly two years ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott began chartering buses to transport migrants to big cities further north – including Washington, New York and Chicago.

Abbott chose so-called "sanctuary cities" as destinations. These are places that have passed laws to restrict co-operation with federal immigration authorities, in a bid to protect immigrants from deportation.

The governor not only wants to shift responsibility for caring for the new arrivals, he has been very forthright about his goal of putting pressure on the Democrat-run cities. And on that score, at least, he’s succeeded.

Texas says it’s moved more than 100,000 migrants, and around 36,000 of them have arrived here in Chicago.

The issue of what to do about the new arrivals has hijacked Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson’s agenda. He took office last year with an ambitious plan to cut crime and increase public services. But managing the migrant crisis is now at the top of his agenda - and he’s asked the White House for more help.

Mike Wendling
Reporting from Chicago

Karen Diaz has one ask: she wants to work.

I met Diaz as she was picking up a coffee from volunteers outside Chicago’s largest migrant shelter. At least 2,500 people are living in the disused warehouse.

Diaz is from Venezuela and arrived in the city with her three small children last month. The family spent months travelling before arriving via buses from Texas. When I ask their ages one little girl shouts out proudly in English: “Six!”

“I’d like to sell food or set up a small business,” Diaz tells me, through a translator. She’s not fussy. “I’ll work as a cleaner,” she says. “I just want to work and support myself and my family.”

It’s a common refrain - the asylum seekers here would prefer steady jobs to handouts.

A block away, large signs mark an “Amazon recruitment center”. But the vast majority of migrants are waiting for decisions on their asylum applications so don’t have work permits - so they won’t be applying for these or any other above-board jobs.

Image source, Getty Images

Donald Trump is heading to Texas to visit the "crime scene at Biden's open border", a campaign spokeswoman says, making clear that for the Republican, today's visit is a political one.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt says "Biden's failure" has resulted in soaring numbers of migrant arrivals and an uptick in fentanyl smuggling. Trump, she adds, will be at the "front lines of Biden's crisis".

Meanwhile, the White House says Trump's journey to Texas has nothing to do with Biden's likely rival in November's election.

"This is not about politics for the president, this is about the American people," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN this week. "This is about coming together in a bipartisan way to try to deal with an issue that majority of Americans care about."

Bernd Debusmann Jr
US reporter

Smuggling migrants to - and across - the US-Mexico border is a vast, organised and extremely profitable multi-billion industry that is almost entirely in the hands of organised criminal cartels.

Experts say that prices for smuggling services vary enormously and are often determined by what the smugglers perceive a migrant - or their family - can pay either up front or in instalments over time.

Current and former law enforcement sources in Mexico and the US told me that even the most basic packages - which one Mexican source described to me as a “let’s see if we can get there” trip - would cost between $5,000 (£3,950) and $8,000 (£6,300) for a family of four starting in Mexico.

Other sources estimated that prices are now around $15,000 (£11,900) to as high as $60,000 (£47,400) for migrants coming from outside of Latin America.

The BBC is unable to independently verify these prices.

For migrants, failing to pay can have dire consequences. US officials warn migrants who don't pay are often forced to work for the cartels, sometimes as prostitutes, drivers or drug-runners. Some are simply held hostage in secret stash houses until the fees are fully paid, or their families in the US or back home are threatened.

Image source, Reuters

It's a sunny day in Washington DC, and in the last hour Biden spoke to reporters outside the White House, before boarding Marine One for his Texas trip.

The focus of the questions were about the latest in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza (which you can read about here), with Biden saying the US was looking into an incident in northern Gaza where more than 100 Palestinians have reportedly been killed.

Image source, Reuters

The numbers began to rise in 2018, largely driven by Central Americans fleeing a series of complex crises including gang violence, poverty, political repression and natural disasters.

The numbers fell drastically in early 2020, when pandemic-era restrictions kicked in.

Since these measures were lifted in early 2021, the numbers have steadily risen, reaching an all-time high of just over 302,000 in December 2023.

By Vanessa Buschschlüter
Latin America editor, BBC News Online

Image source, Reuters

Migration is not just a hot potato in US politics, it also overshadows relations between the US and Latin America.

The Mexican president has made no secret of the fact that he thinks the US is using his country as a piñata, bashing it like the papier-mache animal popular at Mexican parties, for not doing more to stop the flow of migrants.

He often attacks US politicians for clamouring for tighter border controls and yet, according to him, doing little to stem the flow of weapons from the US to Mexico.

Other Latin American leaders have no qualms about using migration to their advantage.

During a short-lived thaw in relations between Venezuela and the US, President Maduro agreed to the resumption of flights returning Venezuelans deported from the US.

But as soon as relations soured again, the Venezuelan government stopped the flights, in the full knowledge of the pressure that creates.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
US reporter

Over the course of five reporting trips at the border since the beginning of the Biden administration, I’ve spoken to dozens of migrants from across the world - but the greatest number has been, by far, from Venezuela. The country has been facing an economic and political crisis as well as high levels of crime, driving millions of its citizens to flee.

Last year, for example, I met a group of young men who described their voyage north through the Darien Gap, a lawless and inhospitable stretch of jungle that separates Colombia and Panama.

Their experiences are typical of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have come to the US in recent years.

“It felt as if everything in that jungle can kill you,” one of them, a 30-year-old named Carlos told me. "If you get sick or get bitten by something, that’s it. You’re dead and you’ll lay there forever.”

Another Venezuelan - who asked me to not give his name - described running into armed men with machetes and guns while in a particularly hostile stretch of the jungle on the Colombian side of the border.

When he got to Panama, he was in for a surprise: he found out his wife, who was travelling with him, was two months pregnant. "That makes me really happy,” he said. “But it made me very, very nervous for the rest of the trip up to the border.”

Both statesmen will land in Texas on Thursday afternoon.

Trump will head to Eagle Pass - a city of about 28,000 people - while Biden will be further east in Brownsville - a larger city with a population of approximately 188,000 and near to a Space X launch site.

Image source, .

Tom Bateman
Reporting from Eagle Pass

Here in Eagle Pass we’ve been hearing how asylum and other immigration claims can take months or years to process. The US courts are unable to cope with the backlog and the White House concedes the system is "broken".

The Republican Governor of Texas Greg Abbot has bussed some 100,000 people to Democrat-run cities including New York, Chicago and Washington DC - increasing the pressure on Biden and widening some of the acrimonious divisions within his administration over how to handle the issue.

His proposals now include so-called border "shut downs" if numbers of crossings hit weekly or daily thresholds, alongside much faster asylum case reviews. But the measures are being held up in Congress by Trump’s Republican allies.

Biden came to power pledging to his Democrat base to overturn Trump’s “inhumane” policies with "ordered" ones on immigration. But as Covid-era restrictions were lifted and the numbers of crossings soared, his administration has largely failed to reconcile his demands not to return to overly harsh crackdowns with the political damage being done due to voters’ perceptions over the issue.

Tom Bateman
Reporting from Eagle Pass

Image source, Reuters

The issue of immigration is one increasingly threatening Biden's campaign for re-election.

Along with the economy, polling consistently ranks it as one of voters' dominant concerns – and the vast majority disapproves of Biden’s handing of it.

Driven from growing conflict or instability and drawn by the post-pandemic jobs gap in the US, immigration across the southern border hit unprecedented highs over the last three years.

In 2023 US Custom and Border Protection recorded a record high of nearly 2.5 million "encounters" at the southern border - with 250,000 of them in December alone.

Angelica Casas
US reporter, Laredo

I’m driving down from San Antonio to Laredo, a border town in South Central Texas between both Eagle Pass and Brownsville.

Neither Biden nor Trump will visit Laredo today, but the border issues they’ll address later are personal for residents who experience daily the heightened urgency of migrant arrivals.

Laredo, an overwhelmingly Latino city, voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.

My drive down Interstate 35 has so far been plagued with tractor trailers, a reminder of Laredo’s economic power as the country’s largest inland port.

Goods, money and also migrants flow through the city’s four international bridges with Mexico.

As I inch closer to the city, the presence of border agents becomes more evident. I’ll be speaking to locals about how the border issue has impacted daily life in the city and will report back here.

Image source, Reuters

It’s a clash of schedules today for Trump and Biden, who both happen to be Texas for border visits on the same day.

Is it a coincidence? Well, earlier this week, Trump officials claimed Biden had hurriedly planned his trip after Trump’s visit was announced - although they offered no evidence.

The White House declined to comment - but Biden suggested that wasn’t true.

"I planned for Thursday, what I didn't know was that my good friend apparently is going," he told reporters from an ice cream shop in New York on Monday.

Francesca Gillett
Live reporter

Image source, Reuters

Hello and welcome to our live coverage as both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump prepare to head to the US-Mexico borders for two separate - and competing - trips.

Biden will be in the border town of Brownsville, Texas, to meet border officials and local leaders - and he’ll also be pushing the immigration bill, which collapsed earlier this month after not getting enough support.

At the same time, Trump will be about 526km (327 miles) up the border in the town of Eagle Pass with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has endorsed him as the Republican candidate..

Immigration is considered as one of the hot topics in this year’s election.

Record numbers of migrants have crossed the border under Biden. Both Trump and Biden have blamed each other - Biden says Republicans have weaponised the issue and won't back his reforms, while Trump says Biden's policies have caused the crisis.

We've got reporters on the ground in Texas, as well as in the northern cities of Chicago and New York which are also being affected. We'll dig into the issue and cover the visits - so stick with us for updates.