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Former President Barack Obama faced off against Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris in Detroit on Tuesday, arguing that his Republican rival, former President Trump, had failed to address the immigration “problem.”
Immigration remains a top issue for voters in the 2024 election. The Biden-Harris administration has come under relentless attack from President Trump for reversing border policy and allowing a record number of immigrants to cross the southern border illegally.
At the Harris Waltz ticket rally, President Obama acknowledged that “immigration is a real issue at our border.” But Harris has pushed back against criticism of her failure to address rampant illegal immigration during her four years as vice president, and Trump’s promise to launch “the largest mass deportation in our nation’s history” is realistic. He insisted that it was not a plan.
“Wasn’t Donald Trump the president for four years?” Obama said. “Wasn’t he in charge before you? Rounding up and deporting millions of desperate people, many of them women and children, is the solution to everything. So why is the number of illegal immigrants basically the same as the number of illegal immigrants?”Did he leave office? ”
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President Obama speaks at a rally supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign in Detroit, Michigan on October 22, 2024. (Katie McTiernan/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“when [Trump] Even after he took office, the problem did not go away,” he added.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
President Obama’s claim that the number of illegal immigrants was “basically unchanged” when Trump left office is not true.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the highest number of illegal border crossings occurred in 2019 during President Trump’s first term, with 851,508 people arrested or denied entry at the southern border. That number fell to 400,651 in 2020, when President Trump accelerated deportations, citing public health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. It invoked its authority under Title 42.
Upon taking office in 2021, President Biden immediately set out to reverse President Trump’s immigration policies. On his first day in office, his administration suspended most ICE arrests and deportations from the interior of the United States, a move blocked by a federal judge following a lawsuit from the state of Texas.
The Biden administration then issued new guidelines for ICE in 2021 that target national security threats, violent criminals and people who have recently crossed the border for deportation. Biden also halted construction of President Trump’s border wall and ended the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to wait abroad until their claims were processed.
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President Trump speaks at the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Sierra Vista, Arizona, on August 22, 2024. (Rebecca Noble)
As a result of these measures, illegal border crossings soared to 1.6 million in fiscal year 2021. The following year, the number of applications reached a record high of 2.2 million, but in 2023 the number decreased slightly to just over 2 million.
Most recently, border crossings plummeted after the Biden administration announced tighter immigration restrictions over the summer. The president issued an executive order that would halt immigration once a certain level is reached. This policy has reduced border encounters by more than 50%.
Looking ahead, President Trump has vowed, if elected, to move troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and give ICE the power to raid workplaces and round up criminal illegal aliens for deportation.
Meanwhile, Harris has not disclosed any specific plans regarding immigration. She instead criticized President Trump for lobbying Republicans against a bipartisan border security bill that failed to pass in the Senate. The bill would increase funding for Border Patrol agents, detention facilities and fentanyl detection technology. It would also restrict entry into the United States if encounters at the border reach a certain level.
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President Trump displays an immigration chart at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, 2024. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Conservatives opposed the bill, saying it would set a floor for high levels of illegal immigration. Some Liberals also opposed the emergency border powers included in the bill.
Harris said a solution to illegal immigration needs to come from Congress.
“I was just talking to border officials at the border, and they’ll tell you… we need more judges. We need to process those cases faster. Prosecution. They need this support. They need more resources, and at the end of the day, only Congress can solve this problem,” Harris said last week.
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“We worked to support bipartisan efforts to actually strengthen the border, including some of the most conservative members of the U.S. Congress. “That’s why Border Patrol agents supported this bill,” she continued. “If we had done that, we would have been able to stem the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States. Fentanyl is a scourge that affects and kills people from every background and every geographic location in our country. , more resources could have been devoted to the prosecution of cross-border cases. As a former attorney general of a border state, I have been involved in investigating criminal organizations.”
“Donald Trump found out about the bill and told them to repeal it because he wanted to solve the problem more than solve the problem.”
Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
