In a recent interview with Newsmax, former President Donald Trump ripped into President Joe Biden’s failures regarding the crisis on the Southern border. He said that immigration numbers have surged since Biden was elected President and that if he would’ve done nothing, we would have the strongest border in history right now. He said he’d left Biden a ‘strong platform,’ but it only took a few weeks to crumble.
Trump questioned President Biden’s executive orders and if they were being done out of incompetence or due to an ‘open-border’ agenda.
“I had everything worked out with the other countries, whether it’s Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico. And even Mexico, stay in Mexico. In other words, these people ought to stay in Mexico, and they couldn’t get into our country. And he ended that. It’s just crazy what they did,” Trump said.
Trump talked about having a strong approach to border security versus Biden’s weak approach to the waves of migrants. Migrants are traveling in record numbers, with approximately 200,000 migrants who have crossed into the United States since February 2021. Human trafficking has spiked and more drugs are pouring into the border.
“You take a look at what’s happening now. And let me tell you: They’re letting people from prisons. They’re opening their prisons. Their prisoners are coming in, their murderers, their drug addicts, and drug dealers, by the way. And the human traffickers are coming in. They’re letting them in. They want them in. They don’t want them in their country, so they’re saying, ‘send them to the USA,’” he adds.
Biden has reversed a number of Trump’s immigration policies, including the “Remain in Mexico” policy that requires asylum seekers to wait out the court date in their home country.
While Biden has also promised not to build “another foot” of Trump’s border wall, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that Biden’s decision still “leaves room to make decisions” on finishing some gaps in the wall and the potential to resume some aspects of the project.
Landowners at the border have also said they are getting mixed messages regarding Biden’s intentions to build the wall. They said that the future of the project remains in limbo because it is meant to prevent the very flow of illegal migration that Biden is now working to contain.
Laura Pena, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said that Biden’s slow proceedings have felt like a “major betrayal” as some landowners have been promised by Biden to have their property returned.
Jose Cavazos said that the federal government seized 6 acres of his family land in Mission, Texas, which is a property right on the Rio Grande river. The family has rented out the property to tenants for decades and was disappointed in the Biden Administration’s continued pursuit of his land. “It’s like he’s making a U-turn. Why say ‘no more walls’ if he doesn’t mean it?” Cavazos said.
Wall or no wall, Biden has gotten himself into a mess and everyone is upset. While people say that his intentions remain unclear, Biden’s message seems simple enough to me. He wants open borders.
