Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) recently sat down with The Floridian to discuss the ongoing border crisis, where he firmly laid the blame squarely on the feet of President Joe Biden (D) for encouraging massive numbers of migrants to come by doing the opposite of what former President Donald Trump was doing.
"When Biden won, the numbers spiked because the perception was basically, 'Whatever Trump did on immigration and migrants, I am going to do the opposite,' so you are basically sending out a message, 'I am going to be lenient,' so that spiked almost immediately," said Sen. Rubio.
Despite the Biden Administration's claims of the border being secure, he continued, migrants simply have to "turn [themselves] over, and when you say the magic words asking for asylum, you are going to be released, either immediately or within a couple of days into the United States."
More egregiously, court dates for asylum claims are often up to ten years away from a migrant's arrival, a fact highlighted by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody in October, demanding the end of catch and release at the border. And when these migrants are given work permits on top of this, they will tell others to keep coming, knowing it worked for them.
Nevertheless, Sen. Rubio pointed out that the Democratic Party refuses to change course.
"And then Joe Biden is in a spot where the alternative to what he is doing now is the Trump policy. But can you imagine how the left wing of his base would react if we started detaining and holding people, sending people back, and actually enforcing and turning them away? They would go nuts," Rubio added, referencing various protests staged against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and calls for its defunding.
Ultimately Rubio concluded, "You have two options when people come into your country: You can detain and return them, or you can release them. The detain and return policy was the Trump policy, and the left went nuts. And Biden cannot go back to that because they will go nuts on him. So he has to do the other one, which is to release them, which only drags and pulls more people to come."
Ironically, in early October, the Biden Administration partially authorized another Trump policy on immigration highly criticized by the left: building a wall where migrant presence is heaviest.
