Trump makes dubious immigration claims and calls Biden policies ‘depraved’ in op-ed as he visits Mexico border

Donald Trump lashed out at his successor’s border policies, calling Joe Biden’s agenda “depraved” while making a number of dubious claims about his own immigration record in a new op-ed, ahead of a visit on Wednesday to the US-Mexico border in Texas.

“These policies are utterly depraved – the actions of someone who by all indications wants to completely abolish America’s southern border,” Mr Trump wrote in the Washington Times on Wednesday, adding, “This is perhaps the first time in world history a nation has purposely and systematically dismantled its own defenses to invite millions of foreign migrants to enter its territory and break its laws.”

In fact, the Biden administration has kept many Trump-era immigration policies or phased them out slowly, and the highly militarized US immigration system is far from allowing open borders.

Among the many distortions in the op-ed include Mr Trump’s description of perhaps his signature promise: building a wall spanning the US-Mexico border. In the end, the administration only built about 80 miles of new barriers where none was built before, in some cases leaving surreal, half-built slabs of wall in the middle the desert where construction ceased as the Biden administration took over.

“When I was president, I delivered on my promise to build a border wall to protect our country,” the former president claims in the piece. “All Joe Biden had to do was paint it.”

Mr Trump also spins other facts, from citing a large spike in border crossings this year compared to last, a comparison undoubtedly skewed by the pandemic, and claiming that “ICE [the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency] is effectively shut down,” a likely reference to the Biden administration’s decision to return the agency to Obama-era guidelines prioritising enforcement actions against migrants who were criminals and those deemed national security threats.

The Biden administration immediately ended the Trump administration’s most controversial immigration policies, including the Muslim-majority nation travel ban and intentional family separation, and proposed sweeping legislative immigration reform.

It took longer to approach the policies most responsible for problems at the border. In June, the Department of Homeland security ended the Trump administration’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy, which stranded tens of thousands of asylum-seekers on the Mexico side of the border in squalid camps as they awaited courts to process their legally protected claims.

And it still uses the Trump administration’s Title 42 directive, which largely shut down the border on coronavirus grounds, leading authorities to turn away most who arrive, except for children. The White House is reportedly considering ending the program in July.