The Biden campaign is trying to remind voters about the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy at the southern border six years after the former president first introduced it.
In a new digital ad, the Biden campaign is marking the anniversary by painting the hard line Donald Trump took while in office, separating migrant families to discourage others from crossing into the country illegally, as a losing strategy for November.
“Six years ago, Donald Trump architected the systematic government policy of ripping innocent children from their mothers,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a statement Tuesday. “Since then, Trump hasn’t just justified these cruel policies — he’s celebrated them.”
As of last summer, the Biden administration had brought about 700 separated families back together, with first lady Jill Biden leading the task force.
“If Trump is reelected, the chaos and cruelty we saw in his first term is the floor: he’ll go even further to attack and demonize immigrants, while doing nothing to address the real issues plaguing our broken immigration system,” Chavez Rodriguez said. “He’s betting that his cruelty and divisiveness is a winning tactic at the ballot box, but like they’ve done in election after election, the American people will prove Donald Trump wrong and expose him for who he truly is: a coward, a bully, and a loser.”
For the Trump campaign, President Joe Biden‘s repeal of his predecessor’s immigration policies has “created an unprecedented immigration, humanitarian, and national security crisis on our southern border and has led to highest rates of human trafficking on record,” with a migrant surge expected this spring.
“President Trump will restore his effective immigration policies, implement brand new crackdowns that will send shockwaves to all the world’s criminal smugglers, and marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner.
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The Biden campaign will target Latino voters in battleground states with the ad “Ripped Apart,” as polls suggest Biden is losing support among that demographic.
Trump’s favorability rating was 42% favorable to 50% unfavorable after his inauguration in 2017 and is currently 44%-53%, an improvement from December 2022, when it was 37%-57%.