Joe Biden refused to apologize for the Obama administration’s record on immigration after being confronted by Telemundo reporter Jose Diaz-Balart.
Under President Obama, more illegal immigrants were deported than under any other president, and many of the policies that President Trump has been criticized for began under his predecessor’s watch, including ICE’s fake university sting operation and housing children in caged-off detention centers.
Diaz-Balart questioned whether Biden felt he should apologize for any of the immigration policies he helped oversee in the Obama administration, including more than three million deportations.
“Some of the structures that were created [under Obama] have really been the ones President Trump built upon to have his zero-tolerance family separation policy. Should you be apologizing for anything?” asked Diaz-Balart.
Biden refused to apologize and argued that Obama should be remembered for pushing through DACA, which allowed children who arrived in the United States illegally at a young age to stay in the country.
Diaz-Balart pushed back, telling Biden, “Vice president, the numbers are there. More than three million people were deported … Do you have anything to apologize for with the three million people that were deported, with the creation of a system that this current administration has been able to utilize to separate families?”
He referenced recent reports that the Trump administration could separate up to 26,000 families under the current situation at the border. Biden brushed it off, saying, “They would have been able to do that before that structure. They could have done that if we didn’t do anything.”
Biden added that he has “nothing” to apologize for regarding his role in Obama’s immigration strategy and condemned his critics, including Julian Castro, who have tried to tie him to the deportations.
“By the way, I never heard Secretary Castro say a single syllable [against the deportations] in the cabinet,” Biden explained.
Biden, 77, is the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary. His RealClearPolitics polling average shows him with 28.7% support.
