President Biden’s reelection campaign is bashing former President Trump for his plans for handling the influx of migrants at the U.S. southern border, after a report that Trump is planning militarized mass deportations and detention camps if reelected.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Trump, the likely GOP nominee, wanted to detain migrants on military bases and fly them on military planes in his first term and plans to complete that unfinished business if granted a second term.
“Let’s call this ‘plan’ what it is: racist, un-American, and ineffective. It’s cheap politics as usual, at a time when the American people demand action from their elected officials,” Maca Casado, the Biden campaign’s Hispanic media director, said in a statement.
Casado said the plan “isn’t about securing the border,” and noted that Trump “single-handedly stopped” Republicans from passing legislation that aimed to tighten security at the border.
Earlier this month, a group of senators from both parties unveiled border legislation that included aid to Ukraine and Israel, but Republicans who had been demanding that aid to Ukraine be coupled with action at the border argued the package was insufficient.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said it was dead on arrival in the House, a move that a number of lawmakers in both parties have indicated involved political calculations, given Trump’s desire to run on the border as a political issue against Biden this fall.
“Now his friends in Congress, who claim to care so deeply about border security, are following Trump’s lead again: doing nothing to address the issue and spending their recess eating well-done steak at Mar-a-Lago,” Casado said.
Johnson visited Trump’s Palm Beach property, Mar-a-Lago, earlier this week during the House recess.
The Biden campaign also called Trump’s reported border agenda “more extreme, more inhumane [and] more violent” than his immigration policy in the first term.
“Donald Trump promised to rule as a dictator on his first day and now we’re seeing what that means: deploying combat soldiers to build mass detention camps and rounding up immigrants like cattle, once again separating families and sparking national chaos,” Casado said.
The border is a top issue in the 2024 election, with Republicans hitting Biden for months over the influx of migrants coming into the U.S. The president countered by criticizing Republicans for not passing legislation to help the situation.
Instead of taking up the border bill, the House focused on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, which they successfully did last week. But, the articles are not expected to move in the Democrat-controlled Senate.