The primary presidential debate of 2024 featured former President Trump’s regular assertions on immigrants, calling them criminals and saying psychological asylums had been being emptied in overseas international locations for folks to come back right here.
President Biden pushed again, calling Trump’s statements lies and “malarkey.” Immigrants are much less prone to commit crimes than folks born within the U.S., research present.
Trump, echoing feedback he makes at his rallies, accused Biden of supporting open borders. “I’d like to ask him: why he allowed tens of millions of individuals to come back in right here from prisons, jails and psychological establishments to come back into our nation, and destroy our nation,” Trump mentioned.
“These killers are coming into our nation. They’re raping and killing ladies. It’s a horrible factor,” Trump mentioned later.
Biden responded: “That’s merely not true. There’s no information to assist what he mentioned. As soon as once more, he’s exaggerating. He’s mendacity.”
Trump tried to border the border as a free-for-all and chaotic, and Biden identified that beneath Trump, kids had been being separated from their households after crossing the border.
“When he was president, he was taking, separating infants from their moms, placing them in cages, ensuring that households are separated,” Biden mentioned. “That’s not the correct technique to go.”
This month, the Biden administration raised the authorized customary for asylum claims and restricted entry to asylum for these crossing the border illegally when arrests common larger than 2,500 a day, as has been frequent.
Biden famous that congressional Republicans, at Trump’s urging, scuttled a sweeping invoice that might have beefed up border safety and revamped immigration insurance policies. Trump did that, he mentioned, as a result of he wished to make immigration a marketing campaign problem reasonably than tackle the issues on the southern border.
Biden additionally mentioned border crossings are trending downward. After record-high arrests on the finish of final 12 months, Border Patrol mentioned preliminary information since Biden’s announcement confirmed arrests had fallen by 40%. Might figures present arrests fell to the third lowest of any month all through his presidency.
U.S. Customs and Border Safety reported that brokers recovered 895 stays of migrants in fiscal 12 months 2022, thrice as many as had been found in 2018. Advocates say the quantity is an unlimited undercount.
Trump has referred to as for the mass deportation of immigrants within the nation with out authorization. He was requested how he would obtain that and whether or not such a coverage would apply to the spouses of authorized residents. He by no means straight answered the query, reiterating his claims about immigrants coming into the nation.
