The rapid reduction in illegal transits at the southern U.S. border challenged the main democratic talk points during the 2024 campaign, when party leaders accused then-format President Donald Trump of helping kill bipartisan border legislation that they saw as the only way to ensure border protection.
“President Trump’s swift and successful border security proves Biden’s false claims about the border insecurity bill that requires the Senate is nothing more than Biden’s attempt to snatch his open border tools and hinder future presidents who want to enforce the law,” Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Border Security and Immigration, told Fox Fox News.
These comments continue to climb onto the evidence that Trump’s policies have quickly improved the situation on the southern border, including news last week that one-day border concerns hit a 15-year low, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents encountered only 200 aliens at the border on February 22.
A spokesman for the Homeland Security Agency said in a press release at the time: “Trump President and Secretary Nome sent a clear message to illegal foreigners: Don’t come to our country. You will not be allowed to come in. If you go in, we will hunt you and deport you.”
Trump reports illegal immigration encounters held at historic lows during his first full month of tenure
The composite image shows President Biden, former President Trump and the southern border. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert and Fox News)
The news came just a few days later, with the southern border crossings down 94% compared to the same period last year, thanks to the Trump administration’s radical crackdown.
While Trump managed to reduce the numbers by enforcing power, many Democrats spent 2024, believing that the ongoing crisis at the border was the result of Trump and his allies in the Republican Party, passing a bipartisan border bill that passed the Senate early in the year and was favored by former President Joe Biden.
“From now to November, the American people will know that the only reason why the border is unsafe is Donald Trump and his Marg Republican friends,” Biden said in February after the bill failed to pass.
“Frankly, I would rather solve this problem with bipartisan legislation because it is the only way to really get the kind of system we have now. Hire more border patrol personnel, more asylum officials, more asylum officials, more judges. But Republicans have no choice.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, the blaming contest continues, with the Supreme Democratic leader’s claim to legislation Trump kills them crucial to ending the crisis.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y. (AP Photo/J. ScottApplewhite)
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“If my Republican colleagues really believe that the system has been undermined, why would they vote against a one that would provide more immigration judges, more asylum officials and be supported by a very conservative Border Patrol coalition?” Chuck Shumer, then the majority leader, asked in a May press release on border security.
“When Americans ask this year who should blame the ongoing chaos at the border, they should listen to Donald Trump himself,” Schumer added.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris took over the torch and continued to blame Republicans on Republicans after the Democratic vote topped the Democratic vote, saying the legislation would resolve the issue at the border if it weren’t for Trump’s intervention.
“Donald Trump has helped this bill and it will help ensure our borders,” Harris said in an interview in August.
“He would rather solve the problem than solve the problem,” Harris said in a debate with Trump in September. “Because he doesn’t think it will help him politically, he told people in Congress, ‘Don’t raise it.'”
Democratic presidential nominates Vice President Kamala Harris to speak in a campaign on Saturday, November 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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“He killed the bill, a border security bill that would add 1,500 agents to the border,” she added.
But Rees believes that not only did Trump’s executive action help alleviate the crisis of his inauguration, but Democrats have another legislative option in border security legislation that has passed Republican-controlled homes.
“The Senate could have passed HR-2, it was the Security Border Act… The House has passed it and it has collected dust on the Senate’s desk,” Rees said.
