José Díaz-Balart, one of the two moderators for Thursday’s Democratic primary debate, claimed President Barack Obama’s administration deported “three million Americans,” in an apparent slip-of-the-tongue during a question directed at former Vice President Joe Biden.
“The Obama-Biden administration deported more than three million Americans,” the Telemundo anchor stated. “My question to you is if an individual is living in the United States of America without documents and that is his only offense, should that person be deported?”
The number was correct, but the illegal immigrants were not Americans.
Nevertheless, the question led Biden to defend his former boss’s record on immigration, claiming Obama did “a heck of a job.”
“Depending if they committed a major crime, they should be deported. President Obama did a heck of a job. To compare him to what this guy is doing is I find immoral. The fact is that we should not be locking people up,” Biden responded. “We should be making sure we change the circumstance as we did why they would leave in the first place. Those who come seeking asylum, we should immediately have the capacity to absorb them, keep them safe until they can be.”
