Former President Donald Trump took aim at the new administration’s immigration policies, warning that the country is being “destroyed” by the crisis at the border.
“We ended Catch-and-Release, shut down asylum fraud and crippled the vicious smugglers, drug dealers and human traffickers,” Trump said in a statement. “The Wall, despite horrendous Democratic delays, would have easily been finished by now, and is working magnificently.”
“Our country is being destroyed at the Southern border, a terrible thing to see,” Trump added.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DENIES THERE’S A BORDER CRISIS, BUT HERE’S THE REALITY
His statement comes as President Biden has tried to navigate a large wave of immigrants appearing at the country’s southern border. After Biden did away with much of Trump’s border enforcement policies during his first few days in office, Customs and Border Patrol officials report illegal crossings have surged to roughly 4,000 per day.
The Biden administration has so far denied there is a growing crisis at the border, even as it moved last week to expand capacity at child-holding facilities past the threshold originally established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 guidance.
“The answer is no,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said when asked if there was a crisis at the border. “I think there is a challenge at the border that we are managing, and we have our resources dedicated to managing it.”
“Respectfully, sir, though, one of your predecessors, Jeh Johnson [President Barack Obama’s Homeland Security secretary], said that 1,000 illegal border crossings a day constitutes a crisis, that it overwhelms the system,” a reporter at the briefing responded. “We’re at between 3,000 and 4,000 now, according to CBP officials. So how is this not a crisis?”
Meanwhile, officials in border states said the Biden administration has left them to fend for themselves. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he is deploying National Guard troops and additional law enforcement to help with the crisis, while Arizona’s Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels accused Biden of playing politics with border security.
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“When this administration failed to engage with my governor, my attorney general, our health departments, our emergency services coordinator, along with other border states and beyond, that’s when it started,” Dannels said. “So, we’re trying to pick up the pieces right now. It’s an unfunded mandate by the federal government to local communities.”
