WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump heads to Arizona to rally supporters Tuesday evening, but first he'll get close to the U.S. border with Mexico, to promote his signature crackdown on immigrants coming across illegally.
Senior officials say Trump won't tour the actual line he has promised to fortify with a "big, beautiful" wall, at Mexico's expense, but he will be about seven miles from Mexican territory. There he'll meet with Border Patrol agents and inspect some of their tools: a Predator drone, river patrol boat, surveillance truck and other security equipment.
Then Trump heads to Phoenix for the campaign-style rally that has some Republicans on edge, for fear he'll air both his gripes against the state's two Republican senators _ Jeff Flake, who's up for reelection next year, and John McCain _ and repeat the sort of racially charged rhetoric that put the president at the center of a furor after recent deadly protests in Charlottesville, Va.
White House officials have not confirmed rumors that Trump is considering pardoning former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, or that Arpaio would appear with Trump at the president's Phoenix speech. Arpaio recently was convicted on charges related to his refusal to stop racially profiling Latinos in the county that includes Phoenix.
Trump's visit to the border area, his first since his election, is intended to highlight the drop in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally since he came to office in January. Administration officials attribute the decline to the tough signals sent by ramped-up immigration enforcement and Trump's own tough talk.
Although illegal border crossings had slowed during the Obama administration, the number of people caught coming illegally into the U.S. declined by 46 percent between Jan. 1 and July 31 compared with the same period in 2016, according to Department of Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan.
Trump visited Laredo on the Texas-Mexico border in July 2015 and said a new wall would help stop the "huge problem with the illegals coming through." It was on that previous border trip that Trump first unveiled the distinctive cherry-red hat embroidered with the words "Make American Great Again" that has become his hallmark.
But the wall is far from a reality and, with Mexico refusing to pay anything, Trump is seeking money from a balky Congress.
One of Trump's first actions as president was to roll back Obama-era restrictions on whom immigration agents could deport. Those limits were designed to avoid separating families, many of them longtime residents, that included people here legally and illegally.
He has promised to increase the number of Border Patrol agents from about 20,000 to 25,000 and more than triple to 15,000 the number of deportation officers tracking down people illegally living inside the U.S. And Trump threatens to block federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities and states that won't help immigration agents find and deport people residing illegally.
The president will likely use his appearance in the region to drum up support for spending more money on his promised wall along the long border from California to Texas.
House lawmakers put $1.6 billion toward Trump's wall in a bill that passed last month, but deficit hawks have been skeptical the money will be well spent and many Republicans representing border states _ including Arizona _ are opposed. Trump has suggested that trade tariffs on Mexican goods eventually would pay for wall construction, but so far no new trade restrictions have been put in place and Mexico has refused discuss sharing the cost of the barrier.
Border Patrol officials have successfully convinced Trump to consider alternatives, like see-through metal fencing and sensors.
"A wall in and of itself will not give the agents what they need to work safely in that space," a Department of Homeland Security official told reporters Tuesday, adding that physical fences and walls need to be accompanied by "the right mix of technology" like sensors and cameras.
