Trump’s comments about immigrants have scored points with his base. Biden faces a trickier challenge, needing to hone a nuanced message Thursday night on a polarizing subject.
When President Biden and former President Trump take the stage in Atlanta on Thursday, immigration and the humanitarian crisis at the southern border will almost certainly be a flashpoint.
Many polls show that voters believe Trump is best positioned to address the issue, and he has continuously slammed Biden on it. He has blamed his successor’s policies for the crisis, and filled his social media feeds with missives about crimes allegedly committed by immigrants, referring to them as “Biden Migrant Killings.” He has vowed to deport millions of immigrants who are in the country without legal authorization.
Trump has referred to migrants as “animals” and even suggested they should be turned into mixed martial arts combatants.
“I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea for you to make a lot of money. You’re going to go and start a new migrant fight league, only migrants,’” Trump said before an evangelical Christian conference in Washington, D.C., last weekend, referring to Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Such comments have scored Trump points with his base and beyond.
Biden faces a trickier challenge, allies and advisors say, and needs to hone in on a nuanced message Thursday night that emphasizes the balance between the need for border security and humanity for immigrants who already have entered this country.
“I don’t think it’s an either-or and I don’t think the American public thinks it’s an either-or,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told The Times this week. “We can and should do both.”
He said Thursday night’s debate will exemplify how “Joe Biden speaks to American people. Donald Trump speaks to his base.”
Matt A. Barreto, a Biden campaign pollster, said an April poll he oversaw found that two-thirds of respondents in key battleground states want “a balanced approach to the immigration system and report high levels of support for policies addressing both border security and paths to citizenship.”
“This is what the president is pushing for and the polling data suggests that’s what the American public wants,” Barreto told The Times. “They want to see a well managed orderly border and they also have tremendous empathy for long-term undocumented immigrants and they want to see them brought out of the shadows.”
Biden has made two moves recently that reflect this balancing act, imposing limits on asylum seekers and clearing a path to citizenship for undocumented spouses of American citizens.
For the third month in a row, respondents to an April Gallup poll cited immigration as the most important problem facing the United States.
