Easily overlooked details from the unqualified disaster that was President Joe Biden’s debate performance in Atlanta were the two major lies he told surrounding the ongoing border crisis his administration has largely instigated. As serious conversations are held regarding Biden’s continued candidacy and apparent incapacity, these lies should not be
forgotten.
‘The Border Patrol endorsed me, endorsed my position.’ — Wait, what?
First, we come to the astonishing claim that Joe Biden enjoys the support of US Customs and Border Protection agents. Former President Donald Trump pounced on the moment, bluntly refuting the notion, but he certainly wasn’t alone with the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing the agents publicly stating immediately to the contrary.
During the CNN debate Biden made the claim, “We significantly increased the number of asylum officers. Significantly – by the way, the Border Patrol endorsed me, endorsed my position.,” as noted by The New York Post.
In response Trump landed a pair of devastating rhetorical blows, first: in a viral moment expressing that he didn’t know what Biden had said at the end of his sentence and expressed doubts the incumbent knew either; but then attacking him directly on the supposed endorsement.
He said:
“Look, we had the safest border in the history of our country. The border – all he had to do was leave it. All he had to do was leave it.
He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists. We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now. All terrorists, all over the world – not just in South America, all over the world. They come from the Middle East, everywhere. All over the world, they’re pouring in. And this guy just left it open.
And he didn’t need legislation because I didn’t have legislation. I said, close the border.
We had the safest border in history. In that final couple of months of my presidency, we had, according to Border Patrol – who is great, and, by the way, who endorsed me for president. But I won’t say that. But they endorsed me for president.
“Brandon, just speak to him,” he added referring to National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd.
Trump concluded, “But, look, we had the safest border in history. Now we have the worst border in history. There’s never been anything like it. And people are dying all over the place, including the people that are coming up in caravans.”
Near simultaneously, the Border Patrol union which represents 18,000 agents according to the Post wrote via X, “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”
Quite to the contrary of an endorsement, in June 6th the NBPC released a statement brutally condemning Biden’s border recent and much derided last-minute pivot in his border policies, “President Biden has released over 2.8 million people into the country (more than the population of Chicago, our third-largest city), claiming that he couldn’t take executive action to fix the abuse of the asylum system.”
The statement continued, “Now, less than six months before the election, he claims he suddenly has the authority to act. Under his new rules, there is no cap on the number of people who can be let into the country through a port of entry on the southwest border.
At a minimum, his order will allow almost 1.5 million people - the population of San Antonio – into the country every year. We don’t call that a solution!”
At most, in February Mr. Judd offered what could be described as a limp, lukewarm statement on a bipartisan border security bill proposed in Congress, but in no way endorsed Biden.
Judd stated publicly, “While not perfect, the Border Act of 2024 is a step in the right direction and is far better than the current status quo. This is why the National Border Patrol Council endorses this bill and hopes for its quick passage.” Although Biden was supportive of the bill and publicly announced that he would sign it into law, the measure was defeated narrowly in the Senate.
Judd and the NBPC did however, endorse former President Trump during the 2020 presidential campaign he alluded to during the debate.
Kids In Cages, redux
In addition to his faux endorsement by the NBPC, Biden repeated the thoroughly debunked claim that during the Trump administration “he was taking – separating babies from their mothers, putting them in cages, making sure the families were separated,” when in fact this was a policy enacted under the Obama administration. As The Associated Press observed when this was brought up by former First Lady Michelle Obama in 2020, “The reference to cages is misleading and a matter that Democrats have persistently distorted.”
“Trump used facilities that were built during the Obama-Biden administration to house children at the border. They are chain-link enclosures inside border facilities where migrants were temporarily housed, separated by sex and age.
At the height of the controversy over Trump’s zero-tolerance policy at the border, photos that circulated online of children in the enclosures generated great anger. But those photos — by The Associated Press — were taken in 2014 and depicted some of the thousands of unaccompanied children held by President Barack Obama.”
During a 2020 debate, Trump famously asked, “They did it. We changed. They built the cages -- who built the cages, Joe?”
While the Trump administration’s policy to prosecute 100% of illegal immigrants did result in additional children being separated from the adults they were traveling with, frequently these individuals were not provably the parents and were frequently human smugglers or are being used as a “ticket” into the U.S. by their parents.
At a 2022 press conference Border Patrol Intelligence Agent Edward Delgado explained, “We’re trained to find those fake family units because that child could be trafficked.” Delgado handles these cases daily at the Rio Grande Valley Central Processing Center.
“[The child] could be recycled to some other adult in Central America or alien smuggling organizations using them for some other means just to get more money out of [that child].”
He told reporters that agent’s careful observations are part of what is used to determine if a child actually belongs to the adult they’re with.
“Each of us goes into the holding areas of the family units, and we look at their documents, the children’s demeanor and interaction with the [alleged parents], and we look for fathers with young infants – 5 or 6 months old,” Delgado said. “The parents are poor, and a stranger offers to pay them $1,000 to use their child, that parent is going to go for that incentive,” Delgado said. “You have a child’s life in a stranger’s hands.”
Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan told the gathered press, “[Illegal aliens] were coached and mentored and given what to say by the cartels and the human smuggling organizations: You grab a kid, and that is your U.S. passport. That will guarantee you entry into the United States. And guess what, they were right.”
In these situations, it wasn’t Border Patrol under Trump or Biden that separated these families, but rather the human traffickers and their own coerced families.
The little time that Biden addressed on the Border was mostly utilized to lament the doomed so-called ‘bipartisan’ border plan forwarded by the White House which as Judd asserted was insufficient to address the problems at our border.
But potentially the greatest overarching lie of the night was the notion that there is any realistic control of our border at present at all under the Democrat regime where previously under the Trump White House: the ‘Remain in Mexico,’ among other policies appeared to be effective based on reported encounters remaining relatively steady from 2016-2018, spiking in 2019 during the lead up to the 2020 election and jumping astronomically after Biden’s inauguration, all while inadmissible illegal immigrants were increasingly turned away.
USAfacts.org reported that in the past three years the reported number of border encounters have jumped after more than tripling from 2020-2021
As Trump observed during the June 27th debate the situation is likely far worse than we know, when he said: “The numbers – have you seen the numbers now? It’s not only the 18 million people that I believe is even low, because the gotaways, they don’t even talk about gotaways.”
Matthew Holloway is a contributor for Conservative HQ. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@theconservativefreelancer.com.
border crisis
border patrol endorsement
2024 Election
Donald Trump
illegal immigration
fentanyl
illegal alien crime
terrorism
Brandon Judd
NBPC
border security bill
2020 border patrol endorsement
human smuggling
They're pouring illegal aliens into blue states to bulk up the sizes of their Congressional delegations, to preserve their Marxist agenda. This is the same strategy that Democrats used to preserve slavery at the Constitutional Convention. The rule for slaves should have been 0/5, not 3/5, because they couldn't vote. With a 0/5 rule, slavery might well have been ended by legislation instead of the deaths of 600,000 Americans.
The border isn't the only place that Democrats are separating parents from children. A much more serious problem is that they're doing it in schools.