Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden admitted during a TV interview on Friday the Obama administration locked up illegal immigrant children in cages and said he regrets having deported 3 million immigrants.
During a 20-minute interview on Jorge Ramos’s Real America show on Univision, Biden said he regretted that some 3 million illegal immigrants—many without a criminal record—were deported during the Obama administration where he served as vice-president.
“The point is there were too many,” he attested. “I saw the pain in the eyes of so many people who saw their families being deported. I know what it’s like to lose family members. It was painful,” Biden said about the fact that many immigrant families were segregated.
“We took far too long to get it right,” Biden admitted. “It wasn’t until 2012 that we began to get it right with the DACA program and trying very much in 2014 to expand that and moving in the right direction,” Biden said.
The DACA program was a regulation signed into law by executive order by President Barack Obama in 2012 that allowed the children of illegal immigrants to stay in the United States without the risk of being deported.
“At the debate in Houston, you said that during the Obama administration and I quote, ‘We didn’t lock people in cages,’ but you actually did—not in the same numbers as the Trump administration, but you did,” Ramos told Biden.
Biden explains to Jorge Ramos why the Obama administration put kids in cages: “We kept them safe… They came unaccompanied. Unaccompanied.” pic.twitter.com/r6KWD6IDiB
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) February 15, 2020
“We found a picture of an 8-year-old boy from Honduras,” Ramos added. “I spoke with the photographer,” Ramos continued pointing out the photo was from a detention center in McAllen, Texas, in 2014.
“Yes,” Biden said. “And what happened was, all the unaccompanied children coming across the border, we tried to get them out. We kept them safe and get them out of the detention centers,” Biden replied. “Essentially that center, that were run by Homeland Security and get them into communities as quickly as we can.”
“I’m saying that the numbers in your administration were not the same as the ones we’re seeing right now with the Trump administration,” Ramos responded.
“Well, beyond that, but look how quickly we got them out and got them back to families. Look how we didn’t engage and we sought the relatives here,” Biden said, adding: “We sought to get them into safe communities. We sought to get them out of the control of Homeland Security to get them safe. But they came unaccompanied, unaccompanied.”
Ramos went on to ask whether the presidential candidate also has an immigration plan of his own, just like his Democratic competitors Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Biden said he would expand legal immigration, bolster the asylum process, and halt construction of President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall, a signature campaign promise of Trump’s.
“I already have the bill,” he said, adding that he would put it into action during his first week in office.
