The claims of President Joe Biden and his 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, have been called into question following a presidential debate on Thursday in which the two candidates returned repeatedly to immigration.
Biden falsely told viewers he lowered illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border to levels below those experienced when Trump left office in 2021.
Meanwhile, Trump alleged that “migrant crime,” or offenses committed by immigrants who illegally came over the southern border, was up under Biden despite a lack of data to support his claim.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower levels of immigration, said neither candidate was without mistakes during Thursday night’s performance.
“Certainly both Biden and Trump had a couple of flubs on some details,” Vaughan said in an email Friday. “But there is no question that Trump is the only one of the two that grasps the severity of the border crisis and that the Biden policies are directly responsible for it.”
Biden has taken steps in recent months to contain a border crisis that peaked in December but is blamed by Republicans for the reversal of Trump-era policies upon entering office. They have highlighted headline-grabbing instances of crime attributed to migrants but also the capture of suspected terrorists who entered the United States illegally.
During the debate, Biden maintained that he had “changed the law” and that “there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally.”
“That’s better than when he left office,” said Biden.
But the claim appeared to be a misrepresentation of what the Department of Homeland Security revealed this week — that arrests at the border had dropped 40% compared to a few weeks ago, when Biden took executive action on June 5 to ban migrants from seeking asylum between ports of entry.
Fewer than 75,000 people were encountered at the southern border in the final full month of Trump’s presidency, compared to about 170,000 in May of this year.
Biden also said the “Border Patrol men endorsed me, endorsed my position.” The National Border Patrol Council, the government agency’s union, immediately posted a message on X during the debate that stated it had not endorsed Biden and “never will.”
The union did, however, endorse a bipartisan Senate border deal negotiated with the White House that House Republicans rejected earlier this year.
Trump also made mistakes in his claims.
“Trump did overstate the number of illegal immigrants in our country,” Vaughan said. “In fact, Biden has let in about 6.5 million inadmissible migrants (4.7 illegal migrants released + 1.8 million gotaways), adding to the estimated 10-11 million illegal aliens who were already here.”
Trump also claimed illegal immigrants released into the country were responsible for a supposed increase in crime.
“Because of his ridiculous, insane, and very stupid policies, people are coming in and they’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen,” Trump claimed. “We call it migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime.”
However, immigration experts who spoke with the Washington Examiner earlier this week said that because federal criminal databases do not break down crime by immigration status, it is impossible to know whether high-profile cases are the result of media attention or a true upward trend. In general, crime has fallen nationally following a spike during the pandemic.
Despite the mistakes by both candidates, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) said he felt Trump was still the better pick on managing the border.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Last night, President Biden made it abundantly clear to millions of viewers across the United States that only Donald Trump can secure our borders. It’s time for a change in leadership at the White House,” Gonzales said in a statement.
Democrats, for their part, accused Trump of fearmongering with his rhetoric.
