McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — Despite being one of the most pressing issues for voters, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump barely got the opportunity to discuss immigration during their first presidential debate of 2024 on Thursday night in Atlanta.
The 90-minute debate — hosted by CNN and moderated by anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash — touched on the economy, taxes, women’s reproductive rights, the war in Ukraine and the opioid crisis. The discussion that followed the debate was centered on Biden’s performance, which analysts described as lackluster and unfocused, and questions about his age and ability to serve four more years.
There were no new immigration policies or proposals suggested during Thursday’s debate — the earliest ever to be held during a presidential campaign cycle. Neither Tapper nor Bash pressed them to elaborate or answer how they would address security or asylum issues on the Southwest border.
It was 14 minutes into the debate when Trump first brought up immigration, but it was during a question regarding the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“There have been many young women murdered by the same people he allows to come across our border. We have a border that’s the most dangerous place anywhere in the world,” Trump said. “He opened it up and these killers are coming into our country and they are raping and killing women and it’s a terrible thing. As far as the abortion is concerned, it’s now back with the states.”
Three minutes later, Tapper asked the first question involving immigration and the border.
“A record number of migrants have illegally crossed the southern border on your watch, overwhelming border states and overburdening cities such as New York and Chicago and in some cases causing real safety concerns. Given that, why should voters trust you to solve this crisis?” Tapper asked Biden.
Biden responded by touting the bipartisan Senate border security bill, which lawmakers, including those involved in the negotiations, struck down twice in Congress.
“We worked very hard to get a bipartisan agreement that would not only change all that,” said Biden, emphasizing that the measure “would have significantly increased the number of asylum officers.”
The measure would have added 4,300 asylum officers and 1,500 new U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel.
“Border Patrol endorsed me, endorsed my position,” Biden said quickly.
Biden’s comment immediately drew a response on X from the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing 20,000 agents nationwide: “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”
However, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema — an Independent and one of the bills’ top negotiators — announced earlier this year that the NBPC had endorsed the bipartisan Senate bill.
Biden quickly moved to criticize Trump for his policy on family separations: “When he was president he was separating babies from their mothers and putting them in cages, making sure the families were separated. That’s not the right way to go.”
Biden said illegal crossings were down 40% since he issued an executive order on June 4 preventing anyone who enters irregularly between legal ports of entry from claiming asylum.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Department of Homeland Security officials had announced the 40% drop in crossings during an operational visit to Tucson, Arizona, on Wednesday.
Biden did not detail the new policy but said: “Now we’re in a situation where there are 40% fewer people are coming across the border. And I mean to continue the momentum to get the total ban, the, the, the total initiative relative to what we’re going to do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.”
Trump retorted: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
“He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons. People that are from mental institutions and insane asylums and terrorists,” Trump said. “We had the safest border in history. Now we have the worst border in history. There’s never been anything like it.”
Tapper asked Trump about his promise to launch the largest deportation plan in history if reelected “including those who have jobs, including those whose spouses are citizens and those who have lived here for decades? And how will you do it?”
Trump did not answer the question.
“We are living right now in a rat’s nest. They are killing our people in New York, in California, in every state in the union because we don’t have borders right now because every state is now a border,” Trump answered. “And because of his ridiculous, insane and very stupid policies people are coming in and they’re killing our citizens at a level we’ve never seen. We call it migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime.”
The nonprofit Amnesty International tweeted: “One thing we’re learning at tonight’s presidential debate: We need to make sure migrant justice, gender justice, economic justice, racial justice, and climate justice are on the ballot this November.”
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said this of the debate: “”President Trump proved once again why he is the leader America needs, while President Biden was slow to respond, incoherent, and unable to defend his disastrous record on the border. Under President Biden, our nation has experienced an unprecedented crisis at our southern border with record-high numbers of illegal immigrants, weapons, and deadly drugs like fentanyl entering our country.”
After the debate, Joshua Rubin, founder of the grassroots organization Witness at the Border, told Border Report: “Those of us who fight for the human rights of people who migrate had to, as happens too often, wince and grit our teeth and hope that the rising tide of hostility shown in this debate, in Trump’s vile rhetoric and Biden’s sometimes limp response, turns. Until then, we are forced to watch as Trump uses his lies about poor people who migrate to bludgeon his opponent. It is painful.”
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@Borderreport.com.