Trump back to US-Mexico border with attacks on Biden immigration policies

Former US president Donald Trump has accused his Democratic successor Joe Biden of neglecting national security by dismantling border controls that have opened the floodgate to illegal immigration into the country.

Trump, who traveled to the US-Mexico border on Wednesday, said "Biden is destroying our country.”

Speaking in front of an unfinished section of border wall, the former president said, “If he would have just done nothing, we would have now the strongest border we’ve ever had.”

“It was even getting better and better and better, because it was all kicking in,” he added.

Trump was later joined at the border by Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R), who is up for reelection in 2022, and has vowed to build a wall at the border with Mexico.

Last month, he called for Biden to finish constructing a wall along the country’s southern border with Mexico.

“President Biden is not continuing what President Trump began,” Abbot said, adding that “Biden needs to start right there and finish building the border wall,”

Trump, who has struggled to maintain a high profile following his loss to Biden in November last year, has not formally announced a comeback bid in 2024, but returned to the border region with his hardline immigration views.

He had sparked controversy during his 2016 election campaign when he branded Mexican migrants as "rapists" and drug dealers, and vowed to build a wall across the southern border.

Texas Gov. Abbott slams Biden’s immigration policies as VP Harris announces first border visit

Texas Governor Greg Abbott blasts US President Joe Biden’s immigration policies ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’s first visit to the crisis-ridden southern border.

Biden, however, signed an order that paused all construction on the southern border and launched a 60-day review of Trump’s project, when he took office in January.

At the end of April, the Biden administration announced that it would cancel all border wall construction that was subsidized with redirected military funds.

Trump also said on Wednesday, “We have an open, really dangerous border. We better go back fast.”

Figures show, since Biden took office, arrests at the southwest US border have risen to the highest monthly levels in two decades.

Biden stands accused of inciting a chaotic migrant rush on the US border with Mexico after he vowed to unwind many of the immigration policies of Trump, when he assumed office in January.

Biden's policies led to an influx of refugees and migrant children from South and Central America to the southern US border in recent weeks.

The influx of unaccompanied children at the border has become an issue for the Biden administration, which ordered to use Trump-era detainment facilities to house migrant children.

More than 4,300 unaccompanied children who crossed the US-Mexico border are being held at a makeshift detention center in Texas under distressing conditions.

Both Democrats and Republicans criticize the Biden administration for its handling of the refugee crisis, and failure to provide proper facilities to the migrant children, exposing them to various dangers.

Rights groups sue Biden for transfer of migrants

In a related development, Essex County officials announced they were ending a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contract with the facility, which as of this week held nearly 100 immigrants for ICE.

When facilities close, ICE forcibly transfers detained immigrants to remote spots across the US, in particular to Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and other places in the Deep South.

On Tuesday, authorities said they transferred a group of 30 immigrant detainees from a facility in New Jersey.

The move has sparked anger among rights groups, who have sued the Biden administration for violating civil liberties and civil rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on Tuesday that it “launched a federal class-action lawsuit that seeks to immediately block the long-distance transfer [of immigrants].”

“Today’s suit is a challenge to a decision made by the Biden administration — it’s not a Trump hold-over,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.

“True to form, we will sue any administration — Democrat or Republican — and hold them accountable when they take positions that violate civil liberties and civil rights,” he added.

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