Biden Campaign Torches Trump’s Immigration Rhetoric in TIME Magazine Interview: ‘Anti-American’

President Joe Biden's 2024 campaign continues to chastise former President Donald Trump for his remarks on immigration in a recent TIME magazine interview, which was published on April 30. In it, Trump reiterated several false notions that have been a mainstay of his campaign speech, such as exaggerated claims about the number of undocumented immigrants in the nation and the crime rates surging in the wake of their arrival to the U.S.

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who is also Biden's campaign's Co-Chair, in a statement obtained exclusively by The Hill, said, “Trump repeating troubling and dangerous rhetoric goes against the very fabric of who we are as a nation. He isn’t just committing to reimplement the cruel, systematic policies of ripping away mothers from their children from his time in office — he’s pledging to go further by using the military and law enforcement to enact his cruel, anti-American, and ineffective immigration policies.” Previously, in February, Biden's campaign had launched a seven-figure ad campaign focusing on Trump's lies from another TIME interview, The Hill reported. 

Escobar was responding to Trump's promise to vigorously enforce immigration rules using the National Guard and local law enforcement. At one point, Trump praised former President Dwight Eisenhower's Operation Wetback. Reiterating the theme of an 'invasion' and employing a dog whistle to allude to migrants as males of 'fighting age', Trump upped his threat to use the military, telling the magazine that undocumented immigrants 'aren't civilians.'

“Dwight Eisenhower was very big on illegal immigration not coming into our country. And he did a massive deportation of people. He was doing it for a long time. He got very proficient at it,” Trump told the magazine. The term 'fighting age', which is often also referred to as 'military age', is frequently used by right-wing media and hard-line Republican immigration advocates. It implies that immigrants may be spies for foreign military groups, an assertion for which there is no supporting evidence.

Escobar attacked Trump for using such language, bringing up the El Paso incident of 2019, in which a shooter killed 23 people and injured 22 more, citing anti-Mexican animosity as his main objective. “I saw the dire consequences of his language and policies firsthand during my first term in Congress: my community was the victim of his continued and consistent xenophobic rhetoric when a white supremacist — who published a screed online using Trump’s own words — slaughtered Latinos in El Paso on August 3rd, 2019. We cannot go back,” asserted Escobar.

TIME also released a thorough fact check of Trump's remarks along with the interview, refuting his assertions on a variety of topics, including the number of undocumented immigrants in the country and elaborating on the definition of the term 'civilian.' “The American people will not stand for Trump’s attacks on immigrants, mothers, and children. They want solutions at our border, not more sick political stunts that come at the expense of the most vulnerable and with an embrace of authoritarianism. Today’s reporting from TIME only highlights the stakes of this election— we must work to reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris,” Escobar said.