The first presidential debate of 2024 featured former President Trump's usual claims about immigrants, calling them criminals and saying that asylums were being emptied in foreign countries so people would come here.
President Biden responded, calling Trump's statements lies and “nonsense.” Studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States.
Trump, echoing comments he makes at his rallies, accused Biden of supporting open borders. “I would love to ask him why he allowed millions of people to come here from prisons, jails and mental institutions to come to our country and destroy it,” Trump said.
“These murderers are coming into our country. They are raping and killing women. It is a terrible thing,” Trump said later.
Biden responded: “That is simply not true. There is no data to support what he said. Once again, he is exaggerating. She is lying “.
Trump tried to portray the border as chaos and a free-for-all, and Biden pointed out that under the Trump administration, children were being separated from their families after crossing the border.
“When he was president, he separated babies from their mothers, put them in cages and made sure families were separated,” Biden said. “That is not the right way.”
This month, the Biden administration raised the legal bar for asylum claims and restricted access to asylum for illegal border crossers when arrests average more than 2,500 a day, as has been common.
Biden said congressional Republicans, at Trump’s urging, killed a sweeping bill that would have strengthened border security and revamped immigration policies. Trump did so, he said, because he wanted to turn immigration into a campaign issue rather than address problems at the southern border.
Biden also said border crossings are trending downward. After a record number of arrests late last year, Border Patrol said preliminary data since Biden’s announcement showed arrests were down 40%. May figures show arrests fell to the third-lowest level of any month during his presidency.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that agents recovered 895 migrant remains in fiscal year 2022, three times the number discovered in 2018. Advocates say the number is a vast undercount.
Trump has called for the mass deportation of immigrants in the country without authorization. He was asked how he would accomplish that and whether that policy would apply to spouses of legal residents. He never directly answered the question, reiterating his claims about the arrival of immigrants to the country.
