Donald Trump slams Joe Biden for ‘illegal migrant invasion’ and highlights Laken Riley’s brutal murder

The former and current US leaders both visited the US-Mexico border in Texas on Thursday, as polling increasingly shows the illegal immigration crisis is the number-one issue for American voters in the lead-up to the November 2024 election.

Mr Trump, 77, began speaking just after 4pm from the border in Eagle Pass – a migrant hotbed that’s been the nexus of a fight between the state of Texas and the Biden administration – while Mr Biden, 81, held a press conference about 520km away in Brownsville.

In an opinion piece published by The Daily Mail head of the visit, the former President said Mr Biden had intentionally allowed the “mass migration of millions of illegal aliens” into the country.

“This is Joe Biden’s invasion,” Mr Trump said.

“When I was President, when illegal aliens trespassed across our border, they were captured, detained, and deported. When Joe Biden came into office, he wilfully and deliberately obliterated every strong border policy I put into place, and launched the largest border invasion in American history.”

Mr Trump said that if he was re-elected, “I will seal the border and shut down the invasion on day one … and we will begin the process of removing Biden’s illegal aliens from our country”.

“Upon taking office, I will restore every strong border policy I had before – and impose tough additional measures to keep out the gang members, human traffickers, sadists and thugs,” he said.

“Finally, I will leverage every tool, resource, and authority to begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

Mr Trump said Mr Biden had stopped wall construction, ordered an immediate suspension of removals, ripped up the “Remain in Mexico” policy, terminated asylum agreements, ended the Covid-era Title 42 rule, “tied the hands” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents, and sought to “turn illegal aliens into voting citizens”.

“Instead of shipping them back across the border, he began shipping them to cities all over the United States by plane, train, and bus to resettle them in your communities,” he said.

“And then he began issuing work permits to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, allowing them to unfairly compete against the American worker.”

At least nine million illegal aliens had “infiltrated across our border” as a “direct result” since Mr Biden took office, Mr Trump said, and “and the true number is surely much higher than that”.

“A large number are fighting-aged men, including from China, Venezuela, Somalia and many other countries,” he said.

“Now, our communities are buckling under the influx and our country is being overrun with crime. Last year, 43 per cent of all ICE arrests were aliens with criminal convictions or pending charges for some 33,000 assaults, 3000 robberies, almost 7000 burglaries, 7500 weapons offences, 4300 sex crimes, 1600 kidnappings, and 1700 homicides.”

Authorities have recently confirmed the brutal Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua – which is known in South America for the torture and murder of its victims, including sex workers – has taken advantage of the migrant influx to rapidly expand its US presence in cities including New York, Chicago and Miami.

“In Michigan, gangs of migrants are stalking suburban houses and plundering them for valuables,” Mr Trump said.

“And in Georgia just last week, 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley was savagely attacked and murdered on the campus of the University of Georgia. An illegal alien migrant who was released into our country under Biden has been charged with her killing.”

Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, an illegal alien from Venezuela, has been charged with the brutal kidnapping and murder of Ms Riley while she went for a run on the University of Georgia campus last Thursday.

Gruesome details contained in police charging documents accuse Ibarra of causing “great bodily harm with an object”, without specifying exactly what it was. He also was charged with aggravated battery for “seriously disfiguring her body … by disfiguring her skull”.

Ibarra entered the US illegally in El Paso, Texas and twice slipped through the hands of law enforcement last year. He was arrested in New York in August and charged with endangering a child – but was cut loose before immigration officials could file a request to ask local police to hold him in custody, authorities said last week.

Speaking at the border in Eagle Pass on Thursday, Mr Trump described Ms Riley as an “incredible young lady” and the “best nursing student there was”.

“I spoke to the parents, the parents are devastated, they’re incredible people,” he said, adding Mr Biden would never dare mention Ms Riley’s name.

The GOP frontrunner said the US was “being overrun by Biden migrant crime”, focusing on the number of illegal aliens coming from countries including The Congo, China, Iran, Yemen and Syria, among others.

“They’re coming from jails, they’re coming from prisons, they’re coming from mental institutions, they’re coming from insane asylums, and they’re terrorists, they’re being let into our country and it’s horrible,” he said.

“I know many of the leaders of these other countries that are doing it, and it’s not just South America, it’s all over the world. The Congo, very big population coming in from jails from The Congo. You look at the jails now, throughout the region but more importantly throughout the world, they’re emptying out because they’re dumping them into the United States.”

He argued Texas, under Governor Greg Abbott’s leadership, had done an “amazing job in a pretty short amount of time” with securing the border in the past few months in Eagle Pass, deploying razor wire, National Guardsmen and buoys into the river.

Mr Abbott spoke after Mr Trump delivered his remarks, arguing Mr Biden was visiting a “sanitised” version of the border in Brownsville – in “extraordinary contrast” with Mr Trump’s visit.

The Governor said the number of illegal migrants in Eagle Pass had gone down to six to seven daily compared to the thousands streaming in before.

Mr Biden, accompanied by his Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, met with Border Patrol agents on the banks of the Rio Grande.

Speaking at a press conference, the President said record-breaking illegal immigration was fuelled by a wave of bogus asylum claims that have badly backlogged the asylum processing system – without committing to using his executive powers to limit the release from custody of asylum seekers, as Republicans urge him to do.

Mr Biden called on Republicans in Congress to “show a little spine” and approve a bipartisan Senate immigration bill and offer “more resources” to address the crisis — after conservatives baulked at the bill this month by saying it did too little while granting Mr Biden redundant emergency powers to take action.

“Today, the process to get a decision on asylum claim takes five to seven years,” Mr Biden said.

“It’s far too long. You come in, you say ‘I have a credible fear’, and what happens? You say, ‘Well, OK, you can come in the country but come back in five to seven years, maybe as many as eight years and you get a hearing from before a judge to determine whether you can stay.’”

Illegal immigrants released pending review of their asylum claims are entitled to US work permits after 180 days.

As of early January, more than 85 per cent of illegal immigrants were being released at the border, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

“This encourages more people to come to the country if they got another five, seven, eight years before they have to do anything,” Mr Biden said.

“If a person who’s thinking about entering the United States understands the case is to be cited in a few weeks or months instead of five to seven years, they’re less likely to come in the first place. They are not going to pay the cartels thousands of dollars to make that journey knowing that we turned around quickly.”

— with New York Post