While Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has dodged questions about what he would do to the Supreme Court if elected, he’s quite clear about his plans on illegal immigrants.
“The fact is I’ve made it very clear within 100 days, I’m going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people,” Biden said in Thursday’s debate with President Donald Trump.
Biden said he and President Barack Obama “made a mistake” by failing to implement comprehensive immigration reform during their eight years in office, even though at one point they held a super-majority in the Senate which allowed them to jam through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
“It took too long to get right,” Biden said. But he vowed to change that if elected, saying, “I’ll be president of the United States, not vice president of the United States.”
Biden has already released two plans on immigration: One would end the Trump administration’s policies, including detention centers for children, the other would create a pathway for citizenship, including for those deemed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
“All of those so-called dreamers, those DACA kids, they’re going to be immediately certified again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship,” Biden said.
In the debate, Trump noted that more than 3 million illegal immigrants were deported during the Obama administration. And Trump hit Biden for the Obama-Biden administration’s “catch-and-release” policy, in which illegal immigrants apprehended at the U.S. border are given a court date and released into the U.S. “Most never show up for their hearings,” Trump said.
“Those with the lowest IQ, they might come back,” Trump added.
Biden claimed almost all illegal immigrants show up for their court dates.
Biden, meanwhile, blasted Trump for the policy of separating adults from children at the border.
“Parents, kids were ripped from their arms and they were separated. Those kids are alone, nowhere to go,” Biden said of the policy. “You have 525 kids not knowing where in God’s name they’re going to be and lost their parents,” Biden said.
The former vice president also said Trump has put children in cages.
“Who built the cages, Joe?” Trump said, noting that the policy began during the Obama-Biden era.
Earlier this year, The Associated Press did a fact check when former first lady Michelle Obama claimed the Trump administration was taking children from their families and throwing them into cages.
“But what she did not say is that the very same ‘cages’ were built and used in her husband’s administration, for the same purpose of holding migrant kids temporarily,” the AP reported. “Trump used facilities that were built during the Obama-Biden administration to house children at the border. They are chain-link enclosures inside border facilities where migrants were temporarily housed, separated by sex and age.”
THE FACTS: The reference to cages is misleading and a matter that Democrats have persistently distorted.
Trump used facilities that were built during the Obama-Biden administration to house children at the border. They are chain-link enclosures inside border facilities where migrants were temporarily housed, separated by sex and age.
At the height of the controversy over Trump’s zero-tolerance policy at the border, photos that circulated online of children in the enclosures generated great anger. But those photos — by The Associated Press — were taken in 2014 and depicted some of the thousands of unaccompanied children held by President Barack Obama.