‘On Second Thought, I Guess Trump Was Right and I Was Wrong’ About Rampant Abuse of the Asylum System
The second in a series noting instances in which the Biden administration has adopted Trump administration policies and practices that President Biden previously pilloried
By George Fishman on March 10, 2023
In presidential candidate Joe Biden’s imagining, America’s asylum system was not being abused; rather, it was saving the world and fulfilling America’s destiny ... before President Trump ruined it all. Biden proclaimed in August 2020 that:
We're going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers. ... My lord, we have never — we have never [until Trump] made asylum seekers stay — seek asylum outside the United States of America.
In the “Biden Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants”, the Biden-Harris campaign wrote that:
The Statue of Liberty has long been a beacon to people “yearning to breathe free” around the world — including asylum-seekers and refugees. But the Trump Administration has worked against this tradition to drastically restrict access to asylum in the U.S. ... Biden will end these policies, starting with Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols [MPP], and restore our asylum laws so that they do what they should be designed to do — protect people fleeing persecution and who cannot return home safely.
[T]hrough his [MPP] policies, Trump has effectively closed our country to asylum seekers, forcing them instead to choose between waiting in dangerous situations ... or taking a risk to try crossing between the ports of entry.
https://cis.org/Fishman/Second-Thought-I-Guess-Trump-Was-Right-and-I-Was-Wrong-About-Rampant-Abuse-Asylum-System
