Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday condemned President Joe Biden’s border agenda, warning that the current administration’s approach would “destroy” the United States.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo aired on Fox News on March 16, Trump lamented Biden’s decision to freeze or reverse several of the previous administration’s border policies, including the construction of the wall on the southern border.
“My policies were working better than they’ve ever seen on the southern border. The wall is almost complete. We just had to fix little sections—complete little sections—that had to be together. We needed them in order to get the trucks back and forth from side to side, but they’ve chosen to stop right in the middle,” Trump said.
“They could have it finished in a month, and it would be just magnificent,” he added. “They should finish it but they’re destroying our country, people are coming in by the hundreds of thousands.”
Trump made the remarks as the Biden administration faced increasing pressure to respond to a flood of illegal immigrants pouring across the border. Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement on Tuesday that the United States is now on pace to encounter the highest number of illegal immigrants on the southern border in 20 years. Thousands of unaccompanied minors are detained in shelters and overflow facilities.
“Young children are coming in and they leave their homes and they come up because they think it’s going to be so wonderful and frankly, our country can’t handle it. It is a crisis like we’ve rarely had, and, certainly, we’ve never had on the border. But it’s going to get much worse,” Trump said.
“What you’re seeing now is very bad record numbers but it’s going to get much, much worse with a little bit of time, you'll see those numbers, expand at a level like you’ve never seen before.”
Biden said on Tuesday that he does not plan to visit the southern border for now. Asked before boarding Marine One in Washington whether he has plans to visit the border, Biden told reporters: “Not at the moment.”
In the early days of his administration, Biden revoked more than a dozen key Trump-era border policies that had largely stemmed the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the border. The policy reversals have largely been blamed for the resurgence of illegal crossings.
“We had very few people coming in and we also stopped human trafficking. When I say stopped it, made a tremendous dent like has never been made before, and also drug trafficking,” Trump said.
“So we did a lot of things, and all of that is now eroded today, they’re coming in, you take a look, they’re coming in from all foreign countries. I see they’re coming in now from Yemen, they’re coming in from the Middle East, they’re coming in from everywhere. They’re dropping them off and they’re pouring into our country,” Trump said.
“It’s a disgrace. They’re going to destroy our country if they don’t do something about it.”
