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Former President Barack Obama stumped for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Detroit on Tuesday, the place he asserted that her Republican rival, former President Trump, failed to deal with the immigration “problem.”
Immigration persistently polls as a high concern for voters within the 2024 election. The Biden-Harris administration has come beneath withering assault from Trump for reversing his border insurance policies and allowing document excessive numbers of migrants to cross the southern border unlawfully.
At a rally for the Harris-Walz ticket, Obama acknowledged that “immigration is a real issue at our borders.” But he pushed again on criticism of Harris for neglecting to deal with rampant unlawful immigration in her 4 years as vp and claimed that Trump’s promise to begin “the largest mass deportation in the history of our country” is not a actual plan.
“Wasn’t Donald Trump president for four years?” Obama stated. “Wasn’t he in charge before you? If rounding up and deporting millions of desperate people, many of them who are women and children, if that’s the answer to everything, why is it that the number of undocumented immigrants basically stayed the same when he left office?”
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Obama makes a speech throughout a rally in help of Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential marketing campaign in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 22, 2024. (Katie McTiernan/Anadolu through Getty Images)
“When [Trump] took office, he did not solve the problem,” he added.
The Trump marketing campaign did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
Obama’s declare that the variety of unlawful immigrants “basically stayed the same” when Trump left workplace is not true.
During Trump’s first time period, the very best variety of unlawful border crossings occurred in 2019, when 851,508 folks have been apprehended or discovered inadmissible on the southern border, in keeping with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That quantity dropped to 400,651 in 2020, when Trump invoked authority beneath Title 42 to expedite deportations due to public well being issues amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
When President Biden took workplace in 2021, he instantly set about reversing Trump’s immigration insurance policies. On his first day, his administration paused most ICE arrests and deportations from the inside U.S. – a transfer that was blocked by a federal decide following a lawsuit from Texas.
Later, the Biden administration rolled out new tips to ICE in 2021, prioritizing nationwide safety threats, violent criminals and up to date border crossers for deportation. Biden additionally halted development of Trump’s border wall and ended his “Remain in Mexico” coverage, which required asylum seekers to attend outdoors the nation for his or her claims to be processed.
Trump speaks on the U.S.-Mexico border on Aug. 22, 2024, south of Sierra Vista, Arizona. (Rebecca Noble)
Following these actions, unlawful border crossings soared to 1.6 million in fiscal 12 months 2021. They hit a document excessive of two.2 million the following 12 months, earlier than falling barely to only over 2 million in FY 2023.
Most lately, border crossings have steeply declined after the Biden administration introduced tighter restrictions on immigration over the summer season. The president issued an govt order that suspended the entry of migrants throughout the border as soon as it reached a sure degree. The coverage has led to a greater than 50% drop in border encounters.
Looking ahead, Trump has vowed, if elected, to relocate army troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and authorize ICE to raid workplaces and spherical up legal unlawful aliens for deportation.
Harris, however, has not articulated a particular plan for immigration. She has as an alternative criticized Trump for lobbying Republicans in opposition to a bipartisan border safety invoice that didn’t advance within the Senate. The invoice would have elevated funding for border brokers, detention services and fentanyl detection know-how. It additionally would have restricted entries to the U.S. when border encounters reached a sure degree.
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Trump exhibits immigration charts through the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, 2024. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times through Getty Images)
Conservatives opposed the laws, arguing that it set a flooring for prime ranges of unlawful immigration. Some liberals additionally objected to the emergency border authority contained within the laws.
Harris has stated that any answer to the unlawful immigration downside should come from Congress.
“I was just down at the border talking with border agents, and they will tell you… we need more judges. We need to process those cases faster. We need this support for those cases that should be prosecuted. They need more resources, and Congress, ultimately, is the only place that that’s going to get fixed,” Harris stated final week.
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“We worked on supporting what was a bipartisan effort, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Congress, to actually strengthen the border. That border bill would have put 1500 more border agents at the border, which is why I believe the Border Patrol agents supported the bill,” she continued. “It would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States, which is a scourge affecting people of every background, every geographic location in our country, killing people. It would have allowed us to put more resources into prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, which I have done as the former attorney general of a border state.”
“Donald Trump learned about that bill and told them to kill it because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
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