President Joe Biden will visit the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time since taking office nearly two years ago, tackling one of the most politically charged issues in the country as he prepares for a reelection bid.

Biden on Thursday announced fresh plans to block Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, expanding the nationalities of migrants who can be expelled back to Mexico, and the visit to El Paso, Texas, isn't expected to yield any new policy breakthroughs.

Instead, it is meant to demonstrate that the U.S. president is taking the issue seriously, stop nagging questions about when he plans to visit, shore up relations with border patrol, and potentially give him another chance to push Congress to pass new laws to fix a broken system.

Biden will meet at the border with local officials and community leaders, and assess border enforcement operations in El Paso, where the Democratic mayor declared a state of emergency last month, citing hundreds of migrants' sleeping on the streets in cold temperatures and thousands being apprehended every day.

U.S. border officials apprehended a record 2.2 million migrants at the border with Mexico in the 2022 fiscal year that ended in September, though that number includes individuals who tried to cross multiple times.

Biden's effort to try and crack down on the tide of migrants has drawn criticism from all sides. Human rights activists and some Democrats say the new restrictions are a retreat from Biden's 2020 campaign promise to restore historical rights to asylum-seekers.

And while winning praise from some U.S. industry groups desperate to solve pressing labor shortages, the policy is likely to trigger legal challenges from both those who favor restricting immigration and advocates for asylum seekers.

Biden on Thursday did open legal, limited pathways into the country for Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians, while also calling on Congress to enact comprehensive reform, something the U.S. law-making body has failed to do for decades.

After the El Paso visit, Biden travels to Mexico to meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in talks that will also touch on immigration issues.