Donald Trump on Thursday denounced President Joe Biden’s recent executive action on immigration in Arizona, a key state where border issues play a significant role in electoral politics.
Speaking at a town hall hosted by the conservative youth organization Turning Point, the former president pledged to abandon Biden’s executive action that aims to crack down on asylum-seeking migrants.
“Biden’s order is not a border security plan,” Trump said. “It’s a concession to the fact that he lost control of a border. And it’s a really dangerous place. On my first day in office, I will rescind Crooked Joe’s scandalous decree.”
Trump has made tough immigration policies central to his political identity since entering politics in 2016 and frequently criticizes Democrats on the issue. He intensified his rhetoric Thursday in the border state, accusing the president of “deliberate demolition of our sovereignty and our borders.”
The action announced by Biden on Tuesday allows the president to suspend asylum requests between points of entry while there is an average of 2,500 crossings per day over a seven-day period.
“I want to send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens home where they belong,” Trump said. “They need to go home because, quite simply, Joe Biden wants an invasion. I want an eviction. I want an eviction. On the first day, I will seal the border. I will stop the invasion and we will launch the largest national expulsion operation in history.
Biden fired back at Trump on Thursday in an interview with ABC’s David Muir, asking Biden to respond to Trump calling his executive action “weak and pathetic.”
“Is he describing himself,” Biden said. “Come on, look, everyone knows what happened. We had a deal, it was much broader than this, much better, much better accepted across the board, and he called and told the Republicans not to support it. This will hurt me, it will help Biden.
After Trump’s rally, Biden’s campaign released a statement accusing Trump of undermining attempts to pass legislation to increase border security, saying he “cares about himself, not you” .
Earlier this year, Trump derailed bipartisan border dealstating in a Truth Social article: “A bad border deal is much worse than no border deal. »
Trump’s town hall Thursday was his first appearance in a battleground state since he was convicted of felony crimes last month, and he devoted most of his speech to the border. Immigration remains a big problem in Arizona and last month, a poll found that a majority of survey respondents said the state needs immigration reform and solutions to problems at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In November, Arizona voters will decide whether local police officers will have the power to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants. The ballot measure was first passed as a bill by the Republican-controlled Arizona state legislature, but…
