Former President Donald Trump on Monday called for President Joe Biden to use Trump-era policies to secure the southern border, emphasizing he has the power to do so.
Trump’s challenge to the president came during his remarks after the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a unanimous 9-0 vote that states cannot disqualify him from the ballot on the basis of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Close the borders,” Trump said to Biden. “You can do it right now; you have everything. Use my policies. My policies were great; everybody said it. Use my policies.”
Trump emphasized that Biden does not need Congress to secure the border.
“You have the authorization right now – I did it. I didn’t go to Congress and say, ‘Do I have the right to close?’ I fought Congress on it,” Trump said.
Notably, Biden has attempted to lay blame on Trump and Senate Republicans over the death of the pro-migration Senate bill last month. Republicans have repeatedly pointed out that the crisis is a result of Biden’s reversal of key Trump border and immigration policies, and that he has the executive authority to reinstitute them if he wanted to.
Trump Friday described how he built “hundreds of miles” of border wall without the help of Congress:
I had the safest border in the history of our country, and I didn’t use Congress for it. And then I built hundreds of miles of wall, and the reason I built it and how I built it was I considered it an invasion of our country, and I took the money from the military, and the Army Corps of Engineers did it with me and we did a great job. And we had the safest border we’ve ever had, and now we have the most unsafe border.
Department of Homeland Security data shows that from February 2021 to January 2024, over 7.2 million illegal aliens arrived at the border, as Breitbart News’s John Binder reported in late February.
Trump believes the “real number” of migrants who have entered the United States illegally under Biden “is probably closer to 15 million.”
“And by the time… the president’s term ends, I believe… you’ll be at close to 20 million people,” which he notes is “almost larger than any state in the union.”
At the top of his remarks, Trump emphasized that “this is not sustainable for our country” or “cities” and declared America is “under siege.”
“This is a violent thing that you’ve done, and many people are dying,” he told Biden. “They die on the trip up, they die going through the border, and they die in our country.”
He charged that many migrants “are coming from prisons and jails” and “many are terrorists.” He would go on to mention the term “migrant crime.”
“Many of the people are criminals, and they’re doing tremendous harm. I call it migrant crime,” he said. “It’s a new category of crime. They’re hurting our country horribly.”
