Closing summary
Weeks after announcing periodic closures of the border with Mexico to stop new asylum seekers from entering the United States, Joe Biden today debuted a policy that will allow undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to apply for permanent residency. The president’s Republican foes pounced on the rule, with Donald Trump saying it amounts to “mass amnesty” for undocumented people, and congressional Republicans vowing investigations. Speaking of Congress, Senate Democrats are expected to later today attempt to pass legislation that will ban “bump stocks”, the device that allows firearms to fire rapidly, which the supreme court decided can remain on the market last week. Republicans are expected to block the measure.
Here’s what else happened today:
Biden argued it was possible to both secure the border and promote immigration in a speech at the White House.
Matt Gaetz, a rightwing Republican congressman perhaps best known for leading the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, is under ethics committee investigation for alleged drug use and sexual misconduct.
Trump’s plans to address immigration involve mass deportations that strain the limits of the US law.
Henry Cuellar, the Democratic congressman who has been indicted on bribery charges, cheered Biden’s new rules for undocumented spouses and children.
New York’s state supreme court declined to hear Trump’s appeal of the gag order imposed by the judge in his business fraud case, which saw him convicted of 34 felonies.
As he concluded his speech, Joe Biden said he believe it is possible to simultaneously secure the border and allow immigrants to flourish in the United States.
“The Statue of Liberty is not some relic of American history. It still stands for who we are. But I also refuse to believe that for us to continue to be America that embraces immigration, we have to give up securing our border. They’re false choices. We can both secure the border and provide legal pathways to citizenship. We have to acknowledge that the patience of goodwill the American people is being tested by their fears at the border. They don’t understand a lot of it,” Biden said.
He then laid into Donald Trump for some of his recent rhetoric against immigrants:
These are the fears my predecessor is trying to play on when he says immigrants, in his words, are poisoning the blood of the country. When he calls immigrants, in his words, animals.
When he was president, he separated families and children at the border, and now he’s proposing to rip spouses and children from their families and homes and communities and place them in detention camps. He’s actually saying these things. It’s hard to believe it’s being said, but he’s actually saying these things out loud, and it’s outrageous.
