Biden AND Trump will visit the border on the same day: 2024 rivals to clash in Texas during crisis that has seen 7.3 MILLION migrants enter since Joe took office and just days after illegal immigrant 'murdered' student jogger

Joe Biden and Donald Trump will make dueling visits to the border on Thursday as illegal immigrant remains a top issue headed into the 2024 election.

The president will travel to Brownsville, Texas to meet with U.S. Border Patrol agents, law enforcement, and local leaders, according to a White House official. 

Trump will visit Eagle Pass on Thursday, where he will blast Biden on the record high number of illegal crossings and discuss the arrest of a Venezuelan undocumented immigrant in the recent high-profile killing of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia

The two rivals are not expected to cross the paths while they are in Texas.

'I planned it for Thursday, what I didn’t know was that my good friend apparently is going,' Biden told reporters in New York on Monday when he stopped for ice cream after taping an appearance on Seth Meyer's late night show.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump will make dueling visits to the border on Thursday when they are both in Texas

On his visit, Biden 'reiterate his calls for Congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and to provide the funding needed for additional U.S. Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, fentanyl detection technology and more,' the White House official said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will push for House Republicans to pass the bipartisan border security bill. 

'He said he was going to take action. He's going to do that. We're going to see him on Thursday on the ground doing that. And so look, there was a deal coming out of the Senate in a bipartisan way that took four months, Republicans got in the way because of what Donald Trump told them to do,' she said. 

Biden and his team have been trying to take control of the narrative when it comes to the border issue as polls show voters consider it a top priority and it's an issue where the president remains politically vulnerable. 

It is Biden's second trip to the border. In January 2023, he traveled to El Paso. Trump has made multiple trips to the border region.

'Crooked Joe Biden has had three years to visit the border and fix the crisis he created. Now Biden’s handlers are sending him there on the same day as President Trump’s publicly reported trip, not because they actually want to solve the problem, but because they know Biden is losing terribly,' said Trump Campaign Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement.

The trips come as the immigration issue ratches to the forefront of the campaign. They also come a few days before the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5, when more than a dozen states hold Republican nominating contests.

Both men have railed against each other on the border issue as they try to turn it into election year fodder.

There have been record crossings of the border during Biden's administration, a fact Trump and Republicans have hammered him on. 

President Joe Biden answers a question from a member of the news media as he and Seth Meyers visit Van Leeuwen Ice Cream in downtown New York

People cross the Rio Grande river to turn themselves in Brownsville, Texas, to authorities to begin their immigration process

Migrants link arms with each other as they wade into the Rio Grande River with intentions to cross into Eagle Pass, Texas

President Joe Biden has only visited the border one other time - El Paso in January 2023 (above)

For his part, Biden blamed Trump for the Republican chaos on Capitol Hill after GOP lawmakers killed a deal on border security.

In February a bipartisan border security bill officially fell apart in the Senate after conservative Republicans trashed the long-negotiated compromise legislation

They argue the bill didn't go far enough to secure the border. Trump, who is Biden's likely competition in November's election, had been lobbying against it, calling it a 'death wish' for the Republican Party.

Biden originally supported the bill to try and take the border issue off the table as he gears up for the 2024 general election. But Trump wanted to keep the issue alive so he can hammer Biden on it. 

Trump is expected to discuss UGA murder victim Laken Riley

Trump has repeatedly accused Biden of being soft on the border and has demanded the president build his wall. 

He will be at Eagle Pass, about 330 miles from Biden's stop. 

During his visit, the former president will deliver remarks from the border to highlight the immigration crisis and blame Biden for it.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has stationed National Guard at Eagle Pass to stop migrants from getting through. The state fenced off about 2.5 miles of the U.S. Texas border in Shelby Park. 

Trump will also discuss the arrest of Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, for the murder of Laken Riley, 22.

Riley, a nursing student, found dead by police Thursday after she failed to return from her morning jog. University of Georgia police found her near where she'd been jogging through the campus intramural fields with 'visible injuries.'

'Crooked Joe Biden’s Border INVASION is destroying our country and killing our citizens! The horrible murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley at the University of Georgia should have NEVER happened! The monster who took her life illegally entered our Country in 2022…and then was released AGAIN by Radical Democrats in New York after injuring a CHILD!!,' Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

'When I am your President, we will immediately Seal the Border, Stop the Invasion, and on Day One, we will begin the largest deportation operation of illegal CRIMINALS in American History! May God Bless Laken Riley and her family!!! Our prayers are with you!' 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has tracked over 1 million migrant encounters since fiscal year 2024 began, the earliest this mark has ever been reached.

The number is about 100,000 higher than the same period last year and is the earliest the U.S. has ever reached the 1 million encounter mark.

An NBC News poll from January found that 57% said Trump would handle securing the border better while 22% said the same for Biden.