The Republican senator from Oklahoma, James Lankford, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that Barack Obama “enforced the border much better than Vice President Biden.”
The Context:
Republicans have made border security a key focus due to the increase in illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. Since October 1, 2023, the start of the 2024 fiscal year, there have been a total of 1,231,213 enforcement actions carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
In the past few months, Lankford led an attempt to make a border deal between Democrats and Republicans that would have given $20 billion for border security and changed the way Americans come to the United States. The bill, which came with a package of foreign help, was worth a total of $118 billion. In February, Republicans and former President Donald Trump spoke out against it, and it failed to move forward in the Senate.
The way America handles immigration has been a problem for a long time, long before Biden became president. During the Trump administration, the number of people arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border went up by 14.7%. It hit 400,000 in the 2012 fiscal year, Obama’s first year in office. During his second term, however, the number of people deported went down, reaching 235,413 in the 2015 fiscal year.
What We Know:
During an interview on Sunday, Tapper questioned Lankford about the potential for passing border legislation.
According to Lankford, he doesn’t believe there is any hope for this year. He is pushing for concrete measures that can actually have a positive impact on the border, similar to what this bill represents. Lankford has reminded the president and his team that there are numerous actions they can take. In fact, President Obama enforced border policies more effectively than Biden has, even though they were operating under the same set of laws. Lankford suggests that if President Biden is not willing to enforce the border like President Trump did, then at the very least, he should enforce it like President Obama did.
Views:
There are more and more people crossing the southern border illegally, and Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. Biden will have a tough time on the campaign road. When Trump ran for president three times, immigration was one of the main issues he talked about.
On the other hand, Trump’s words about the problem have been compared to those of Adolf Hitler, the late German dictator. He said that newcomers to the U.S. are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
But in response to the criticism, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Newsweek, “Those who try to make that ridiculous claim are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”
A poll from March 5–6 by Emerson College asked 1,350 registered voters whether they thought Biden or Trump would be better at managing immigration and border security. There were 51.8 percent who said Trump and 48.2 percent who said Biden. It was possible for the poll to be off by up to 2.6 percentage points.
What’s Next?
President Biden remains resolute in his commitment to push forward with the border deal that has faced challenges in the past.
In his State of the Union (SOTU) address on Thursday night, the president emphasized the significance of the bill, stating that it would not only save lives and establish order at the border, but also grant him, as well as any future president, the necessary emergency authority to temporarily close the border in cases of overwhelming migrant numbers.
“We have a simple choice, folks,” Biden emphasized. “Instead of fighting about fixing the border, let’s actually fix it. I’m prepared to take action. Send me the border bill immediately.”
