Former President Donald Trump is embarking on a new media offensive against President Biden’s handling of the migrant surge at the southern border, arguing his successor has squandered security gains from the previous four years.
Trump hasn’t been quiet since leaving office in January, but as the situation at the border spirals out of control, he senses an opening to take his messaging war against the Biden administration to a new level and defend his own legacy in the process.
“You have a lot of bad people coming into our country, and they’re doing nothing about it,” Trump said on Fox News on Monday, claiming the Biden administration is “destroying our country.”
“We had it in such good control two months ago, three months ago,” the former president said on commentator Lisa Boothe’s new podcast Monday morning. “And then he made the statement that you want to have; you want to come in.”
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Republican strategist and former Trump 2016 campaign official Bryan Lanza described Biden’s border security record as a “target-rich environment for criticism.”
“The Biden administration screwed things up, and they still don’t have a plan to fix it,” he said. “Trump is telling truth to power.”
The White House, by contrast, places the blame squarely on Trump for making asylum more difficult.
“That is a process that is broken; it was broken by the last administration,” press secretary Jen Psaki said at a Monday briefing. “And [Biden] wants to put in place a process, through an immigration bill, through steps taken by the Department of Homeland Security and HHS, to improve that process and make it safe, efficient, and effective. We’re going to need some time to do that.”
Not so fast, Trump argued during a two-day border blitz.
“We proudly handed the Biden administration the most secure border in history,” he said in a statement Sunday night. “All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot. Instead, in the span of just a few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast.”
Trump’s initial salvo came after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the rounds on the Sunday television shows in an attempt to defend Biden’s record on the border. “The border is closed,” Mayorkas said at various points on ABC, NBC, and Fox News. Trump panned Mayorkas for a “pathetic, clueless performance” with a “self-satisfied presentation” that was a “national disgrace.”
“Even someone of Mayorkas’s limited abilities should understand that if you provide catch-and-release to the world’s illegal aliens, then the whole world will come,” Trump said.
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Since Biden took office, there has been a run at the border that has overwhelmed the federal government. Over 100,000 people attempted to enter the United States in February alone. There are an estimated 15,000 minors being housed near the border with minimal media access to assess their living conditions, as well as reports of migrants being released into the country without giving the authorities a way to contact them about appearing at future hearings.
“Those are very limited cases, and it’s certainly not a depiction of the overarching policy,” Psaki said when asked about those reports, after describing a Washington-funded social media campaign to discourage migrants from coming.
“We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” Mayorkas acknowledged in a statement last week.
Controlling immigration was a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign. While the border wall wasn’t finished and some of his policies, such as the detention of children as part of a “zero tolerance” approach to illegal border crossings, sparked a national outcry, it’s a record many Republicans think compares favorably to what is going on now under Biden.
The Republican National Committee characterized the Biden White House as being in “denial” about the border. “A historic number of illegal immigrants crossing the border, a record number of under-aged migrants in CBP facilities, and an explosion in gang and cartel activity … all during a pandemic,” said a Monday statement. “Biden’s denial will not make his crisis go away. It’s time for Biden to enter the real world, recognize the crisis, and reverse his terrible policies.”
“Trump’s emergence the last week or so on the border issue makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons,” said Republican strategist Jim Dornan. “One, it was his signature issue in 2016, and throughout his presidency, so it’s an easy one for him to comment on. Two, Biden is completely mishandling the situation in so many ways, it’s easy to beat him up on it. And three, it allows Trump to keep his name out there while he decides what to do in 2024.”
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While Trump remains noncommittal about a 2024 White House campaign, he is expected to be involved in GOP efforts to retake Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
“Frankly,” Dornan said, “I’d be advising him to do exactly the same thing.”
