WASHINGTON - United States President Joe Biden will visit the US-Mexico border in Texas on Feb 29, the White House announced, in the Democrat’s latest bid to regain control over soaring illegal immigration ahead of the November election.

Mr Biden will go to Brownsville, Texas, to meet federal border patrol agents and “reiterate his calls for congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and to provide the funding needed” to protect the porous border, a White House official said on Feb 26.

Record numbers of migrants have crossed the border under Mr Biden, turning the issue into a major political liability in his re-election campaign.

Likely opponent Donald Trump has put opposition to illegal migration at the centre of his own campaign, stirring up fierce anti-immigrant sentiments with often violent rhetoric.

Trump will also be visiting the Texas border on Feb 29, according to US media.

Republicans blame Mr Biden’s policies favouring the right to asylum for the flow of migrants, while the White House says that Trump’s party is deliberately sabotaging a bipartisan attempt to find a solution.

The latest Bill, which has stalled in the Senate after the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives pledged to torpedo it, would be “toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades”, the White House official said. AFP