As immigration and the soaring of border crossings take the centerstage of the national conversation and the presidential campaign, different reports have surfaced about both candidates' intentions to deal with the situation.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that former President Donald Trump is crafting a set of potential measures described as "the largest domestic deportation operation in American history," including the use of the military for these purposes and the building of mass detention camps.
After the reported plans made the rounds on the political scene, the Biden campaign responded to the possibility by blasting his likely opponent: "Let's call this 'plan' what it is: racist, un-American, and ineffective. It's cheap politics as usual, at a time when the American people demand action from their elected officials," Maca Casado, the Biden campaign's Hispanic media director, said in a statement.
Casado added that the plan "isn't about securing the border" and resorted to what seems to be Democrats' new strategy to go on offense about the issue: reference Trump's role in Republicans' rejection of a bipartisan deal that would have allocated some $15 billion to border security. He has "single-handedly stopped" them, Casado said about the the bill.
"Now his friends in Congress, who claim to care so deeply about border security, are following Trump's lead again: doing nothing to address the issue and spending their recess eating well-done steak at Mar-a-Lago," Casado said.
The messaging is in line with that of Tom Suozzi, who won a special election in New York to take over George Santos' seat in the House of Representatives. Suozzi's campaign ran ads calling for more border security and featuring an interview he did on Fox News in which he supported U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Biden, on his end, is also considering implementing a series of unilateral measures aimed at stemming the flow of migration to the country since congressional negotiations hit a wall.
According to a report by NBC News, among the measures there would be some that would make it harder to qualify for asylum and others that would make it easier to quickly deport people who don't meet the criteria for this.
Quoting three people with knowledge of the deliberations, the report claims that asylum officers would be instructed to raise the standards of "credible fear interviews," the first step in the screening process for those who cross the border illegally. Moreover, law enforcement officials would be told to prioritize recently arrived migrants for deportation.
The shift in rhetoric comes as almost 80% of people in the U.S. believe the soaring of crossings in the southern border of the country is a grave problem and that the Biden administration is not doing a good job addressing it, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.
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