Biden, Trump clash over immigration policy at Atlanta debate – Nebraska Examiner

Immigration is taking center stage in the 2024 presidential campaign and was also the focus of the first presidential debate Thursday night between President Joe Biden and presumptive GOP nominee Donald J. Trump.

Immigration is a major issue for voters and for Trump, as the Biden administration struggles to cope with the highest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in 20 years.

Biden, during the 90-minute debate on CNN in Atlanta, defended his administration’s handling of immigration and accused Trump of scuppering a bipartisan U.S. Senate border security deal.

Biden also highlighted the deal as a reason he should be re-elected, because the White House was able to forge the deal in the first place.

“We worked very hard to reach a bipartisan agreement,” Biden said.

Immigration crackdown

Republican senators rejected the bipartisan border security deal earlier this year, siding with their House colleagues and Trump. The deal would have significantly overhauled U.S. immigration law by creating a temporary process to close the border during surges and raising the bar for asylum applications.

During the debate, Trump claimed that Biden did not need legislation to implement policy changes at the southern border because “I didn’t have legislation, I said close the border.”

In early June, Biden launched his administration’s most drastic crackdown on immigration, issuing an executive order instituting a partial ban on asylum procedures at the southern border.

Trump called the action “insignificant.”

The debate took place the day after a news conference by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from Tucson, Arizona, on fewer encounters with migrants following Biden’s executive order.

He said the Tucson sector has “seen a more than 45 percent decline in encounters with the U.S. Border Patrol since the president took action, and repatriations of individuals encountered in Tucson have increased by nearly 150 percent.”

“Across the entire southern border, encounters with Border Patrol have decreased by more than 40 percent,” Mayorkas said.

“Remain in Mexico” policy

Trump cited past policies he considered effective and criticized Biden for reversing them, such as one that required migrants to remain in Mexico while awaiting asylum.

Biden criticized Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that separates parents from their children in an effort to deter undocumented immigrants at the border.

“When he was president, he separated babies from their mothers and put them in cages,” Biden said.

And, without citing evidence, Trump blamed immigrants for the crime, calling it “migrant crime.”

According to recent FBI statistics, violent crime in the country has decreased by 15%, and researchers have found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than American citizens.

Trump brought up the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley and blamed Biden’s immigration policies.

“All he’s doing is making our country unsafe,” Trump said.

In late February, Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, was reported missing by her roommate when she didn’t return home from an errand on the University’s campus. Georgia to Athens.

Local police found his body and soon after arrested a 26-year-old Venezuelan man for his murder – an immigrant previously arrested in Georgia for shoplifting and entering the country without authorization in 2022, according to Immigration and United States Customs Enforcement. In response, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Act.

Mass deportations

The debate moderators asked Trump how he would carry out mass expulsions, but he did not go into detail.

He has repeatedly said he would carry out a mass deportation campaign against undocumented immigrants, using local law enforcement, the National Guard and possibly the U.S. military. He did so during his election campaign and in a lengthy interview with Time magazine.

“We need to get a lot of these people out and we need to get them out quickly because they are destroying our country,” Trump said during the debate.