Donald Trump will stop in Austin on Friday

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As the 2024 US presidential election enters its final stages, the Republican candidate announced on Wednesday that he will be in Texas this week on the same day as his Democratic challenger.

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to be in Austin on Friday, where he will discuss border security and immigration crime at a 12:30 p.m. news conference at a private jet terminal in East Austin, his campaign said.

News of Trump's visit comes a day after Vice President Kamala Harris announced she would hold a rally in Houston on Friday with U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, who is running for U.S. Senate. The location of Harris' rally has yet to be announced, but according to a Democratic National Committee event page, it is scheduled to take place on Friday between 3 and 8 p.m.

This will be Trump's first trip to Austin since May 2022, when he spoke at the Austin Convention Center as part of the American Freedom Tour.

After Trump's press conference, an appearance on the podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” is planned. According to Politico, Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship and this would be Trump's first appearance on the entertainer's show.

Trump has frequently criticized both Harris and President Joe Biden's immigration and border security policies, saying communities are being “ravaged by migrant crime.”

During Harris' first visit to the southern border in Arizona last month, she said her administration would pursue tougher criminal charges against immigrants who repeatedly enter the country illegally and would bar them from re-entering for five years.

Meanwhile, Trump said he would restart the “Remain in Mexico” program, which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their immigration court date. He also said he planned to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, a promise he made during his first term but which was not kept.

Public polls have consistently shown Harris trailing Trump by several percentage points in Texas. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Trump is ahead in Texas by 6.6 percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight rolling polling data updated Wednesday.

Disclosure: Politico has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. A full list of them can be found here.