Durbin on Biden Immigration Plan: ‘Can’t Revert’ to Belief That ‘Immigrants Are Enemies’

In a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) sounded off on President Joe Biden’s efforts to eliminate the President Donald Trump administration’s “bad policy” when it comes to immigration.

Durbin said Biden is trying to “reconcile” the “horrible chapter in American history,” which he asserted was the Trump administration “forcibly” removing children from their mothers at the border. He emphasized that America cannot revert back to the belief that “immigrants are enemies” because they are part of the nation’s “future.”

“[T]he first thing [Biden is] trying to do is to reconcile this horrible chapter in American history in which we will spend decades trying to live down — the zero-tolerance program, where the Trump administration forcibly, physically removed babies, infants and toddlers from mothers at the border and separated them, sending them off into a bureaucracy with no accountability,” Durbin advised. “It took literally months, sometimes years, for us to locate them and to try to establish where they came from, where their parents might be. And we’re still in that pursuit.

“Joe Biden — I know him as a person — takes this to his heart, and he’s doing everything he can to reunite those families as quickly as possible,” he added. “But we have to come up with an immigration policy that reflects our values, who we are as Americans: a nation of immigrants. We have to do this in a humane way and a just way, and we can’t revert to the Stephen Miller version of history, which says that immigrants are enemies. They are our friends; they are part of America’s past and will be part of its future.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent