Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have singled out some of President Joe Biden’s statements from his first formal press conference about immigration numbers and said that his statements were not true.
“‘It happens every single solitary year.’ President Biden claimed the dramatic increase in migrants flooding our southern border is totally normal for this time of year. → FALSE,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter.
He then cited yearly data on border-crossers.
“It happens every single solitary year.”
President Biden claimed the dramatic increase in migrants flooding our southern border is totally normal for this time of year. → FALSE.
2015: 24k
2016: 26k
2017: 18k
2018: 26k
2019: 66k
2020: 30k
2021: More than 100k pic.twitter.com/0jryTDNr2N— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) March 25, 2021
Graham also said that Biden’s remarks were erroneous.
“The Trump policies created dramatic decreases in illegal immigration,” Graham wrote on Twitter. “The changes made by President Biden have created a virtual human tsunami.”
Graham asserted that Biden is disseminating “stunning” misinformation in respect to immigration, further saying that the president doesn’t understand the situation at the border and has no recourse to solve the pertaining problems.
“With all due respect, this press conference is hard to watch. The misinformation being given by President Biden on immigration is stunning,” Graham wrote.
“It’s clear he does not have the situational awareness he needs to understand what is going on at the border or how to fix it.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.
Biden said in the press conference that people are coming because they know he is a “good guy.”
“I guess I should be flattered people are coming because I’m the nice guy. That’s the reason why it’s happening, that I’m a decent man or however it’s phrased, that’s why they’re coming, because they know Biden’s a good guy. Truth of the matter is, nothing has changed,” Biden said.
“As many people came, a 28 percent increase in children to the border in my administration, 31 percent in the last year, in 2019, before the pandemic in the Trump administration. It happens every single solitary year. There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. It happens every year,” the president added.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), border patrol apprehended 100,441 illegal immigrants at the southern border in February, representing a 28 percent increase compared to January.
“What’s sad is that President Biden doesn’t understand the basics about the current dynamic at the border and the ‘pull’ factors of illegal immigration,” Graham continued.
Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump harshly criticized the Biden administration over its policies at the border.
In respect of the growing number of illegal crossings, Trump told Fox News host Lisa Boothe in a podcast, “They’ll be coming up by the millions.”
He warned that the situation will likely deteriorate toward more severe levels.
“It’s nothing compared to what’s going to be in a couple of months,” Trump predicted. “As I said before, you have some very bad hombres coming up and we’re taking them into our country, and it’s insane.
“They go into our country, we never find them again; they never come back, a very tiny percentage comes back,” Trump said, referring to the Biden administration’s effective return to the Obama-era “catch and release” policy in which asylum seekers were released into the interior of the country to await a court hearing, often never to be seen again.
Upon taking office, Biden revoked a number of Trump’s executive orders regarding immigration policy, including the orders for “Resuming the United States Refugee Admissions Program With Enhanced Vetting Capabilities,” “Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement,” and “Implementing Immediate Heightened Screening and Vetting of Applications for Visas and Other Immigration Benefits, Ensuring Enforcement of All Laws for Entry Into the United States, and Increasing Transparency Among Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government and for the American People.”
