Democratic Congresswoman Hits Out Against Biden for ‘Using the Same Tools’ as Trump

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) hit out against President Joe Biden for “using the same tools” as former President Donald Trump to crack down on illegal immigration, Tuesday.

Reacting to Biden’s decision on Tuesday to temporarily prohibit illegal immigrants at the border from requesting asylum, Jayapal told CNN host Kaitlan Collins, “I think that this is a mistake for several reasons. One, this is severely limiting the right to seek asylum.”

She continued:

I think what the president is trying to do is address the fact that we all want order at the border. We all want to see an immigration system that is orderly, that allows people to be processed quickly, that allows people to come in with different legal pathways, and Republicans have continued to block us in doing that. But enforcement-only actions like what the president is doing today, which mirrors something that Donald Trump did, it was stopped by the courts, but using 212(f) of the INA, of the Immigration Nationality Act, is a harsh enforcement-only measure that is not going to work because people are not going to stop coming when they are fleeing terrible circumstances.

The congresswoman also criticized Biden for cutting the amount of time that illegal migrants have to secure an attorney from 24 to four hours, before warning, “We make the mistake of trying to out-Republican the Republicans.”

After arguing that independent voters “don’t want harsh enforcement policies that turn away very vulnerable asylum seekers,” Jayapal continued:

I think the president could have handled this differently. I’ve told him that directly, and I think that we have to lean in as Democrats to an inclusive vision of immigration, and we really have to make, continue to point out all the differences that we have with Donald Trump, who is xenophobic, racist, has said terrible things about immigrants.

She concluded, “I know that is not who President Biden is, but using the same tools that Donald Trump used is actually a big problem for Democrats to be able to continue to show those differences and keep our base with us.”

Watch above via CNN.