President Donald J. Trump concludes his remarks at the 450th mile of the new border wall Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, near the Texas Mexico border. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
President Trump said in a recent interview that he may visit the U.S./Mexico border to show some leadership where the Biden administration has failed.
“The wall is just a few weeks away from being completed. [Biden] didn’t want to complete it,” Trump told host Jeanine Pirro. “They should finish the wall, number one. And they should have the [Remain in Mexico] policy reinserted, because if you don’t have that, this is going to be a disaster…The wall should be completed by now if he let — he stopped it almost at his first day. He stopped construction of the wall.”
The Biden administration ended the Migrant Protection Protocols, which Trump enacted in January 2019. The MPP, which is also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, made asylum-seekers wait in Mexico during the duration of their immigration court cases.
Data from the Department of Homeland Security in 2019 found that the Remain in Mexico policy was effective in curbing the surge of illegal immigrants. The DHS assessment described the policy as an “indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system.” Former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan has described MPP as a “game changer.”
Trump called Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador a “great president,” who supplied “soldiers on our border, 28,000 soldiers stopped people from coming in.”
Last week, the president of Mexico placed blame on the Biden administration for the border crisis by saying, “Expectations were created that with the government of President Biden, there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, wanting to cross the border thinking that it is easier to do so.”
Trump then said that he would visit the U.S. southern border.
“I don’t know what they’re doing. And they don’t know what they’re doing,” Trump said of the Biden administration. “It’s a very, very dangerous situation. I’d love not to be involved. Somebody else is supposed to be doing it.”
“Over the next few weeks, I guess I’ll go [to the border],” the former president proclaimed. “And I’m not sure that I really should do it, Jeanine, other than the fact that I have such respect for the Border Patrol and for ICE. And these people they’re dying for leadership. There’s nothing. There’s no leadership.”
“The Border Patrol and all of the people of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], they want me to go,” he said. “I really feel I sort of owe it to them, they’re great people.”
When Pirro asked Trump when he would visit the conditions at the border, he replied, “Over the next couple of weeks. Border Patrol wants me to go— probably over the next couple of weeks. I don’t think there’s a rush for me to go.”
Trump then took a shot at Biden for not visiting the situation at the border, “He’s supposed to go and make the decisions.”
Last Sunday, Biden told reporters that he would visit the border “at some point.”
Even Fox News’ Chris Wallace, no friend of Donald Trump, has criticized the Biden administration for its complete lack of transparency on the border.
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