Trump at border
Says Joe ‘destroying country’
For the first time since he left office, former President Donald Trump on Wednesday returned to the US-Mexico border, where he said the surge in illegal immigration was caused by President Biden’s reversal of Trump’s hard-line immigration 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 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and local law enforcement in Weslaco, Texas.
“All they [the Biden administration] 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 was followed by a trip to the border at Pharr, where Trump told a crowd of congressmen and journalists: “Biden is destroying our country.
“We built a wall that was not penetrable and we were just about finished. And then we had an election where . . . 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 canceled construction of Trump’s US-Mexico border wall and ended his policy of requiring Central Americans to stay in Mexico while US courts reviewed claims of persecution.
In his roundtable remarks, Trump slammed the Biden administration for — among other things — failing to paint the 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.”
Biden has not yet visited the border as president.