President Joe Biden categorically denied that his actions have triggered the migrant surge at the southwest border, telling reporters at his first White House press conference that former President Donald Trump was the outlier on immigration whose policies needed to be stopped.
“I make no apologies for ending programs that did not exist before Trump became president that had an incredibly negative impact on the law, international law, as well as on human dignity,” Biden said.
Otherwise, Biden maintained he had not changed U.S. policies on who is eligible to enter the country and that the current wave is largely a product of weather and conditions in the countries of origin. Noting that most migrants are being turned away, he repeatedly dismissed the idea that people would send their children across the border because he is a “nice guy,” a “moral, decent man” in PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor’s formulation, while at the same time maintaining he wouldn’t mistreat minors as Trump did.
TRUMP SEES AN OPENING TO DAMAGE BIDEN ON BORDER CRISIS
Multiple reporters nevertheless told Biden they had encountered parents who said they did encourage their children to travel to the United States in the belief that he would make it easier for them to stay.
Biden ended the Trump administration’s policy that asylum applicants remain outside the country throughout the process, proposed a moratorium on deportations that is now tied up in court, and threw his support behind legislation creating a pathway to citizenship for most illegal immigrants already here.
Yet as some 5,000 minors are now in federal custody and another 10,000 are otherwise being housed by authorities as they wait to be matched with a vetted sponsor, Biden has taken to discouraging people from coming now. “Yes, I can say quite clearly don’t come over,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. The president signaled that he is in talks with Mexico to get it to receive the migrant families who have been allowed to remain in the U.S.
“We’re in negotiations with the president of Mexico,” Biden said. “I think we’re going to see that change. They should all be going back.” Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the U.S. is “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”
Trump has accused Biden of squandering the hard-won border security gains of the past four years. But the Biden administration says it was Trump’s dismantlement of the system for processing young migrants that is to blame for the current “situation.”
“My predecessor,” Biden quipped during his press conference. “Oh, God, I miss him.” He dismissed a question about whether he expected to run against Trump again in 2024, but the immigration debate still pits them against each other.
Thursday’s session with reporters in the East Room was Biden’s first formal press conference as president, coming significantly later than Trump’s or former President Barack Obama’s. But he has brought back daily White House press briefings, normally led by press secretary Jen Psaki.
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In addition to numerous questions about the border, Biden was pressed on his stated commitment to bipartisanship. He responded that he was talking with Republican lawmakers and pursuing policies that polls showed had support among GOP voters, if not their elected officials.
“I would like elected Republican support, but what I know I have now is electoral support from Republican voters,” Biden said. He also claimed, “Republican voters I know find” GOP-backed voting laws “despicable.” He hinted his qualified support for the filibuster, which he agreed was a “relic” of Jim Crow, was contingent on some level of Republican cooperation with his agenda.
