Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance toured a small section of the US-Mexico border Thursday in Cochise County and made brief remarks to the press in attendance, American media reported.
Vance spoke to reporters for about 10 minutes along a stretch of the border near the town of Sierra Vista and denounced what he called the Biden administration’s open borders policy. He said:
“They stopped deportations on day one, they stopped construction of the border wall on day one, we see the border wall sitting here, ready to be completed behind us, and that can’t happen because of Kamala Harris’ administration.”
To the left of Vance’s podium, a section of the 30-foot steel wall built by the Trump administration towered above a string of large construction vehicles and went up a steep mountainside. To his right, stacks of rusted post sections lay among lush desert meadows.
He said that if elected, a second Trump administration would reintroduce policies like “Remain in Mexico,” which forces asylum seekers to wait for their cases to be processed overseas. Vance also added:
“You’ve got to reimplement Remain in Mexico, you’ve got to stop catch and release, you’ve got to force the asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their claims are being adjudicated.”
However, thousands of migrants are already being sent to Mexico or their home countries. Under an executive order issued by the Biden administration in June, most migrants apprehended at ports of entry are sent back across the border under expedited removal proceedings and are barred from entering the US for the next five years – even those seeking asylum.
US arrests at US-Mexico border dropped 30% in July
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security says it has seen the number of daily border apprehensions drop to less than 1,800, a number that could drop enough to lift the asylum restriction. According to the latest Customs and Border Protection data, Border Patrol agents made fewer than 84,000 apprehensions in June, the lowest number since 2021.
Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector report about 400 apprehensions per day, down from a peak of 2,500 per day late last year. Meanwhile, aid groups in Mexico report that the number of people in need of assistance has increased significantly.
Biden’s asylum restriction is also the subject of a lawsuit by human rights groups, who say it violates a section of US immigration law that says people in the US have the right to seek asylum regardless of how they arrived.
The number of migrant arrests for illegally crossing the US border with Mexico fell by about 30 per cent in July to a low during Joe Biden’s presidency, US authorities said, raising the possibility that the temporary asylum ban could be lifted soon.
