WASHINGTON — Donald Trump this past weekend told Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that if he becomes president again, Abbott will not have to worry about conditions at the border. This came as President Joe Biden’s campaign steps up its attacks on Trump’s immigration proposals, saying they would trample on the Constitution and human rights.
Visiting the Texas-Mexico border Sunday, Trump bashed President Joe Biden’s handling of conditions there.
“We had the most secure border in our history. Now we have the most unsecure border,” Trump told the crowd in Edinburg, Texas.
Some immigration experts call the unprecedented increase in migration a global issue beyond any president’s control. But Trump and fellow Republicans like Abbott, who endorsed Trump this weekend, blame the record levels of illegal border crossings on Biden.
“Mr. Governor, I am going to make your job much easier,” Trump said. "You'll be able to focus on other things in Texas.”
Republicans are betting that conditions at the border are a political liability for Biden as he seeks a second term. Still, Biden’s campaign is ratcheting up its criticism of Trump when it comes to the issue of immigration policy, saying that Biden inherited a broken system and that Trump would ignore the Constitution and strip immigrants of their rights.
When asked how much contrasting Biden’s policies to Trump's will be part of strategy, Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told Spectrum News, “We hear more about Donald Trump and what the MAGA Republicans running for president want to do if they are in the White House, and it is scary. It is unacceptable to the American people.”
Trump’s border plan includes rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants in the country and sending them to detention camps in South Texas and reinstituting the travel ban he implemented for people from some Muslim-majority countries.
Democrats have raised concerns about possible mass deportations and asylum restrictions under Trump, as well as an end to birthright citizenship, which is the constitutional guarantee that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a U.S. citizen.
“There are families that still need to be reunited because of what Donald Trump left,” Munoz said.
“It also offers no solutions to the real issues that our country is facing when it comes to immigration reform. The American people want action on this issue. (President Biden) has been clear he's willing to work on a bipartisan basis in Congress to address these issues,” he continued.
Trump’s campaign has defended his record, writing he “executed a multi-layered approach of regulatory and policy reform that enforced the law and ensured that only qualified immigrants who did not threaten the homeland would receive merit-based visas and would be allowed into American communities.”
Both parties in Texas and across the country are trying to capture the Latino vote in 2024. Biden’s campaign says the president is not taking this community for granted and is working to highlight the choices voters will have to make next November. But Republicans have made inroads with Hispanic voters in recent elections, and some polls show those gains will continue.