MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said President Joe Biden is not doing enough to secure the U.S.-Mexico border during Monday’s “Morning Joe.”
Scarborough said Biden allocates adequate funding to Ukraine but doesn’t give equal amounts of dedication to tackling the “unprecedented crisis” at the border. Border agents have encountered record-high numbers of illegal migrants since Biden assumed office in January 2021 and have most recently apprehended over 2.2 million illegal migrants at the border in the 2023 fiscal year, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“This is an unprecedented crisis on the border that calls for unprecedented action and some people in his base are not gonna like it. Okay, well that’s what compromise is. Like [former president] Lyndon Johnson was like, ‘I want 51 votes. If we get 65, 68 votes, then I didn’t push the compromise enough. I want 51 votes which means I offended people on both sides of the extreme and we got everything in there we could possibly get in there.’ That’s what Joe Biden needs to do here,” Scarborough said.
“We’re always hearing, ‘well, these people keep streaming across the border because we don’t have enough border agents. We don’t have enough judges. We don’t have enough this. We don’t have enough that.’ Well, there aren’t resources to take care of this,” he continued. “And I’m sorry, but going around on the campaign trail and talking about what’s happening in Central America, that’s not gonna help anybody.”
Scarborough argued Biden could leverage the border crisis in his favor against former President Donald Trump, who will inevitably go after the president for his border response. (RELATED: Scarborough Says Democrats Are Out Of Touch With Majority Of Americans On Immigration)
“Actually, give people the resources they need on the border,” Scarborough continued. “Give them the judges. Give them the security. Give everybody what they need, the border security people, and this is a great opportunity to do it. Don’t listen to the extremes on both sides. Do what’s the right thing, and I will say, if you do what the right thing is, to bring some order to the border. He actually, every time Donald Trump brings up the border he [Biden] goes ‘wait, what are you talking about? I funded the border more than you ever did. I spent more money on the border than you ever did with your imaginary wall that you had up in your mind, and you said you were gonna build this great, beautiful gold wall with one door in the middle of it. You never did it. You never did it,” he continued.
Illegal migrant encounters surged during Biden’s presidency in comparison to Trump’s. Border officials apprehended over 450,000 migrants in the 2020 fiscal year, the final year of the Trump administration, according to CBP. These numbers soared to more than 1.7 million in the first year Biden took office.
The American public has expressed disapproval of Biden’s handling of the border. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from August found that 57% of respondents disapprove of the president’s handling on immigration, while 28% approve. The poll interviewed 1,032 adults online and had a plus or minus 2.0 margin of error.