Former President Trump returned to the U.S.-Mexico border Wednesday, taking direct aim at President Biden for the surge this year in migrants crossing the barrier.
“There has never been a border so secure as the southern border that we had, and now it’s opened up,” the former president emphasized as he sat down for a briefing from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Lone Star State law enforcement and border officials.
And slamming Biden, who reversed key immigration policies implemented during the Trump administration, the former president charged that “now we have an open, really dangerous, border. More dangerous than it’s ever been in the history of our country, and we better go back fast.”Biden has ended many of the restrictive immigration polices implemented by Trump, who repeatedly pledged during his successful 2016 campaign for the White House to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for the construction. Trump made border security a top policy during his administration and in 2019 declared a state of emergency in order to divert federal funds heading to the military to pay for the border wall.
Besides halting construction of Trump’s wall, Biden also ended a program that forced migrants to stay in Mexico as they waited for resolution to their U.S. asylum cases, as he aims to follow through on his 2020 campaign pledge for a more humane immigration system.