In the lead-up to the US elections, former President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden clashed over immigration during the first presidential debate on Thursday (local time).
Biden asserted that his policies have led to a 40 percent reduction in the number of immigrants entering the country. He criticized Trump for separating migrant families during his presidency.
“We significantly increased the number of asylum officers. The border patrol endorsed my position. When he (Trump) was President, he was separating babies from their mothers, putting them into cages, making sure their families were separated. That’s not the right way to go,” Biden stated at the debate hosted by CNN.
Trump countered by claiming that US borders were the “safest” during his administration and alleged that the current situation allows the “largest number of terrorists” to enter the country.
“We had the safest border in history. All he (Biden) had to do was leave it. He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people who are coming from prison, mental institutions. We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country, all over the world,” Trump responded.
“They are killing our people in New York and California and every state in the union because we don’t have borders anymore,” he added, attributing the rise in crime to what he termed the “Biden migrant crime.”
“They’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen before,” Trump continued, citing the recent case of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, found dead in a creek earlier this month.
According to CNN, Biden’s early immigration policy focused on undoing Trump-era regulations. Upon taking office, Biden signed executive orders to reverse Trump’s immigration enforcement expansions, lift restrictions on entry from seven Muslim-majority countries, and halt the construction of the border wall.
In June, Biden invoked a policy to bar migrants crossing the US-Mexico border illegally from seeking asylum once a daily limit is reached, addressing a significant political vulnerability. Later, Biden announced an executive action allowing certain undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to apply for lawful permanent residency without leaving the country.
