Trump touts southern border visit ‘over the next couple of weeks’

Former President Donald Trump said he is considering visiting the southern border to examine the influx of immigration.

Mr. Trump told Fox News that he is considering heading to the border sometime “over the next couple of weeks” and feels like he owes it to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials who he said have asked him to visit.

“Thousands and thousands of people are coming up right now as we speak,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News. “And you’re going to have millions of people pouring into our country and it’s going to destroy our country. I don’t know what they’re doing and they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s a very, very dangerous situation. I’d love not to be involved. Somebody else is supposed to be doing it.”

When asked by Fox News host Jeanine Pirro if he thought he would go to the border before President Biden, Mr. Trump said he was not looking for a competition with Mr. Biden but a solution for the problems he sees at the border.

“Well, I’m not looking to have a race, I’m looking to get a problem solved,” Mr. Trump said. “This is going to destroy our country. We have — you have potentially millions of people coming up over a fairly short period of time and these are people that in a large way are not people that we want in our country. You have criminals coming up, you have murderers, rapists, drug dealers coming up.”

Last week, Mr. Biden said the border surge “happens every year” and put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of trying to persuade Mexico and Central American countries to do more to stop the influx of people heading to the United States.