President Joe Biden on Wednesday said the current surge of illegal immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border started under the Trump administration.
“This new surge we are dealing with now started with the last administration, but it’s our responsibility to deal with it humanely,” Biden said as he met with Vice President Kamala Harris, chief of staff Ron Klain, and other advisers in the White House. He did not elaborate.
“There was a serious spike in people heading to the southern border even in the midst of that [the Trump administration]. That was because there were serious natural disasters” in Latin America and the Caribbean, Biden said.Other senior administration officials, including Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have blamed the previous administration’s policies for the surge and the conditions along the border.
