GREENVILLE, South Carolina — Former vice president Joe Biden told an town hall at Clinton College in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Thursday afternoon that he would close down migrant shelters and detention facilities at the border.
Biden was asked by a Clinton College student what he would do to improve and help migrants in the facilities reunite with their families.
“Close them down!” Biden declared, to loud applause.
“No, no, no, no, no, no,” he continued. “We don’t need them. We [meaning President Barack Obama and himself] found that, when we were in office, in fact … [when] we finally got things under control, you have to report back for a hearing on such-and-such a date, people show up!”
Biden neglected to mention that many of the migrant shelters and detention facilities were opened under the Obama administration (or, as Biden refers to it, the “Obama-Biden administration”), after a massive surge of unaccompanied minors to the border.
Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security recently reported to Congress that as many as 90 percent of so-called “asylum-seekers” failed to show up for their court hearings.
Other Democratic presidential candidates have also called for the facilities to be closed, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
It is not clear how Biden and the other candidates propose to care for unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally, or for others arrested (or rescued) at the border.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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