During the first presidential debate in the run-up to the US elections later this year former US President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden sparred on Thursday (local time) over the issue of migrants entering the country.
Biden claimed that his policy has reduced the number of immigrants arriving by 40 per cent.
He attacked Trump alleging that during his tenure, migrant families were separated from each other.
“We significantly increased the number of asylum office. The border patrol endorsed my position. When he (Trump) was President, he was separating babies from their mothers, putting them into cages, making sure they’re the families were separated. That’s not right way to go,” Biden said at the first debate hosted by CNN.
Donald Trump hit back at Biden claiming the US borders were the “safest” in history during his tenure, while further alleging that today, the “largest number of terrorists” are entering the country.
“We had the safest border in the history. All he (Biden) had to do is to leave it. He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people who are coming from prison, mental institutions. We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country, all over the world,” Trump said.
“They are killing our people in New York and California and every state in the union because we don’t have borders anymore,” he added.
Trump blamed Biden and what he called the “Biden migrant crime” for the issue.
“They’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen before,” the former president said.
He mentioned 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was found dead in a creek earlier this month.
In the first several months of his term, Biden’s immigration policy focused on reversing Trump-era rules and promises, according to CNN.
Almost immediately upon taking office, Biden signed executive orders undoing Trump’s expansion of immigration enforcement, reversing Trump’s restrictions on US entry for passport holders from seven Muslim-majority countries and halting construction of the border wall.
In early June, Biden invoked an authority that bars migrants who cross the US-Mexico border illegally from seeking asylum once a daily threshold is met, a significant attempt by the president to address head-on one of his biggest political vulnerabilities.
The executive action came after a bipartisan border measure failed earlier this year. Later this month, Biden announced another executive action allowing certain undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to apply for lawful permanent residency without leaving the country, CNN reported.