McALLEN, Texas — Former President Donald Trump returned to the US-Mexico border Wednesday for the first time since he left office and accused President Biden of inciting this year’s historic surge of illegal immigration, saying the crisis might have been averted if Biden had just done nothing to overturn his hardline policies.
“We did a hell of a job and we had it down to really a science. It was down to a point where people just weren’t getting in unless they came in legally,” Trump said at a roundtable discussion with Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) and local law enforcement.
“The drugs had dropped by 70, 80, 90% in some cases, and fentanyl, it’s true, it almost dropped to nothing for whatever reason. But I guess the reason was we were tough. This is a great group. And all they had to do was go to the beach. If they went to the beach and did nothing, they would have been fine.”
The indoor roundtable resembled events from Trump’s presidency and was followed by a trip to the physical border — where Trump spoke to a crowd of congressmen and journalists with a half-finished section of border wall as his backdrop.
“All Biden had to do is go to the beach,” Trump repeated near the incomplete border wall, charging that “Biden is destroying our country.”
Trump added, “If he would have just done nothing, we would have now the strongest border we’ve ever had. It was even getting better and better and better cuz it was all kicking in.”
At the roundtable, Trump and Abbott listened as state officials and sheriffs wearing cowboy hats spoke of border challenges. Republican congressmen and Trump-era officials, including his final Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, sat around the semi-circle of tables facing reporters.
“We built a wall that was not penetrable and we were just about finished. And then we had an election where we did much better than we did the first time. And amazingly, we lost,” Trump said.
Biden has urged potential migrants not to illegally cross the border, but many migrants say they were inspired by his rhetoric and lax policies.
Biden campaigned on welcoming Central American asylum seekers and is backing bills to legalize most illegal immigrants. He canceled construction of Trump’s US-Mexico border wall and ended his “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required Central Americans to remain in Mexico while US courts reviewed claims of persecution.
Biden also dropped a 2019 rule banning immigrants deemed likely to require welfare, boosted a refugee admission cap and ended the Justice Department’s 2018 “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all illegal border crossings.
Trump was expected to huddle with members of the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in Congress, during the border trip to discuss resistance to Biden’s policies.
In his roundtable remarks, Trump slammed the Biden administration for — among other things — failing to paint his border wall, which he said could cause it to rust.
“They’re supposed to paint the wall and they aren’t even doing that. They got to get a coat of paint on the wall. Believe it or not, it does rust. Maybe that’s what they like, let it rust, let it rot,” Trump said.
While standing near the wall, Trump added that “the best color to paint it is black, because if you paint it black, it’s so hot nobody can even try to climb it.”
Trump also claimed that Latin American countries are releasing criminals so that they can take advantage of lax border policies and enter the US.
“The problem with the open borders is that countries are opening up their jails, they’re opening up their prisons, you guys see this, and they’re letting all their prisoners out. You notice, their prison populations are way down? They do it very slowly because they don’t want people to know this, but I know it. And they’re letting all of their murderers, rapists, drug dealers and human traffickers out, and they’re coming into the United States of America at a level like we’ve never seen. They weren’t coming in with us,” Trump said.
The number of US-Mexico border detentions hit a 21-year monthly high of more than 180,000 in May. Nearly 179,000 people were detained in April and more than 173,000 were intercepted in March.
Biden has not yet visited the border as president.
McAllen is one of the most popular illegal crossing areas — and leaders of the Border Patrol’s labor union slammed Vice President Kamala Harris last week for visiting the relatively well-secured El Paso area instead of McAllen.
In an apparent swipe at Harris, Trump said, “we’re going to the real part of the border where there’s real problems, not a part where you look around and you don’t see anybody.”
About two dozen Republican lawmakers, led by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, toured La Joya, a town on the banks of the Rio Grande, on Tuesday night ahead of Trump’s visit. The Post joined lawmakers who trekked through mud to see the partially built border wall and talk with migrants in handcuffs.
Critics accuse Biden of creating new “pull” factors that are luring hundreds of thousands of migrants to the country — a stance notably taken by Guatemala’s president and Mexico’s president. But Democrats emphasize “push” factors such as corruption, poverty and gang violence in Latin America.
Harris abruptly visited El Paso on Friday after Trump announced he would be visiting the border to attack the policies of the Biden-Harris administration. Biden tapped Harris in March to stem the flow of migrants, but her trip this month to Guatemala and Mexico to address the “root causes” of migration was overshadowed by her struggle to answer questions about why she hadn’t visited the border.
Tom Homan, former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, joined Trump’s entourage at the border and said in a Fox News interview that Harris “never left an air conditioned building” during her trip.” President Trump is back in the fight. He might not be the president, but he’s putting this front and center to the American people,” Homan said.
Homan warned that the migration crisis could get even worse if Biden ends a policy of immediately expelling most single adults who cross the border under a COVID-19 policy known as Title 42.” You think this is a crisis, wait till that happens. They shouldn’t do it. But if they do it, you’re gonna see numbers like you’ve never seen before,” Homan said.
“Right now, we got an unprecedented number of children, higher than we ever counted in the history of the Border Patrol coming across the border this year. Once you lift up Title 42, then you’re seeing adults come… Is the Biden administration going to release them too? That’s the plan. If he does that, we might as well just shut the border down and send the Border Patrol home. There’s no immigration enforcement anymore.”
But Texas Democrats blasted Abbott, who is raising funds for a private wall-building initiative, for inviting Trump to the border.
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), who represents McAllen, said it was “nothing short of a slap in the face to South Texans.”
Gonzales said that “wasting taxpayer dollars to promote the construction of a border wall instead of correcting the failed electrical grid is bad leadership that is further putting Texans’ lives at risk.”
Gonzales added, “We must look at the three Central American countries people are coming from and make surgical investments that will provide jobs, security and prosperity to encourage migrants to stay home.”
Another South Texas Democrat, Rep. Filemon Vela, said, “Governor Abbott is creating a distracting media circus with a failed former president.”
Vela insisted that “the narrative of a violent and insecure border region is blatantly false. The border is not a war zone, and the wall Abbott and Trump are trying to get Texans to pay for is not only a waste of their hard-earned money but also an un-American symbol of hatred that separates and intimidates our communities, harms our wildlife, and encroaches on landowner rights.”
GOP lawmakers dismissed Democrats’ criticism and doubled down on their own criticism of Biden and Harris.
“President Trump may not be our president today, but he’s the real leader of our country and he’s certainly the real border czar because of his record of achievements. I mean, leadership is about delivering results and about following through on your promises, and this president did it in spades,” Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who attended the Trump roundtable, told The Post. “Every success and every achievement has been reversed and now we’re seeing record numbers the other way.”
Banks, who led a group of GOP lawmakers on a tour of the border on the eve of Trump’s visit, called for swift action to reverse Biden’s policy changes.
“The numbers prove it, [the border] was under control on Donald Trump’s watch,” he said. “President Trump spoke to that point and it’s the Biden policies that have opened the border — versus the Trump policies that secure the border. And the statistics show we’re at a dangerous place today and it’s going to take a lot of time to fix it.”