During the first presidential debate on Thursday, former president Donald Trump called immigrants criminals and said mental asylums were being emptied in foreign countries for people to come here — despite the fact that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S., studies show. President Joe Biden called Trump’s statements lies and “malarky,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “These killers are coming into our country. They are raping and killing women. It’s a terrible thing,” Trump said later. Biden responded: “That’s simply not true. There’s no data to support what he said. Once again, he’s exaggerating. He’s lying.” This month, the Biden administration raised the legal standard for asylum claims and restricted access to asylum for those crossing the border illegally when arrests average higher than 2,500 a day, as has been common.
During the debate, Biden noted that congressional Republicans, at Trump’s urging, scuttled a sweeping bill that would have beefed up border security and revamped immigration policies. Trump did that, he said, because he wanted to make immigration a campaign issue rather than address the problems on the southern border. Biden also said border crossings are trending downward. After record-high arrests at the end of last year, Border Patrol said preliminary data since Biden’s announcement showed arrests had fallen by 40%. May figures show arrests fell to the third lowest of any month throughout his presidency. Trump has called for the mass deportation of immigrants in the country without authorization, but never directly answered a question related to how he would achieve that and whether such a policy would apply to the spouses of legal residents.