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Former President Barack Obama campaigned for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Detroit on Tuesday, claiming that her Republican opponent, former President Trump, failed to solve the immigration “problem.”
Immigration remains a key issue for voters in the 2024 election, with the Biden-Harris administration under attack from Trump for reversing border policies and allowing record-high numbers of migrants to cross the southern border illegally.
At the Harris-Walz rally, Obama acknowledged that “immigration is a real issue at our borders” but defended Harris against accusations of neglecting the immigration crisis during her vice presidency. He criticized Trump’s proposal for “the largest mass deportation in the history of our country” as an unrealistic solution.
“Wasn’t Donald Trump president for four years?” Obama asked. “Wasn’t he in charge before you? If rounding up and deporting millions of desperate people, many of them women and children, is the solution, why did the number of undocumented immigrants basically stay the same when he left office?”
Obama added, “When [Trump] took office, he did not solve the problem.”
However, Obama’s claim that illegal immigration numbers “basically stayed the same” when Trump left office is inaccurate. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data shows that illegal border crossings peaked in 2019, with 851,508 apprehensions or inadmissibles at the southern border. This figure dropped to 400,651 in 2020, when Trump invoked Title 42 to expedite deportations amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Biden assumed office in 2021, he swiftly reversed many of Trump’s policies. His administration paused most ICE arrests and deportations, although a federal judge later blocked the order. Biden also halted construction of the border wall and ended the “Remain in Mexico” policy.
In fiscal year 2021, border crossings surged to 1.6 million, hitting a record 2.2 million in 2022 before slightly declining to over 2 million in 2023. Recent Biden administration policies, including tighter immigration restrictions, have resulted in a more than 50% drop in border encounters.
Trump has promised, if re-elected, to relocate military troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and authorize ICE to raid workplaces and deport criminal illegal aliens. Meanwhile, Harris has criticized Trump for blocking a bipartisan border security bill that would have increased funding for border agents and fentanyl detection, restricted border entries during high traffic periods, and supported additional border security measures. Conservatives and some liberals opposed the bill for different reasons, leading to its failure in the Senate.
Harris emphasized that real solutions to immigration must come from Congress. She noted, “We worked on supporting what was a bipartisan effort…to actually strengthen the border,” highlighting the bill’s provisions for more agents and fentanyl detection, which were supported by Border Patrol agents. However, she claimed that Trump intervened, saying, “Donald Trump learned about that bill and told them to kill it because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
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