CNN host admits Trump’s immigration policy was ‘right,’ says Biden must bring it back

CNN Host Fareed Zakaria in an interview set to air on Friday acknowledged former President Donald Trump’s policy to have immigrants apply for asylum from their home country was correct and called on President Joe Biden to reimplement it in his administration.

Biden’s administration disposed of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy in August 2022 after being forced to reinstate it in November 2021. Zakaria on PBS’s “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover” said Trump’s policy for immigrants to apply for asylum from their home country and wait in Mexico worked, urging Biden to put it back in place as well as take “symbolic” actions to secure the border.

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“Today, people are coming in aided by cartels to whom they pay huge amounts of money, and they’re not running away from law enforcement,” Zakaria told host Margaret Hoover. “They’re running towards law enforcement because they have figured out that all they have to do is say the magic words: ‘I have a credible fear of persecution.’ And bingo, you’re in the country legally. You get two court hearings. They could take seven years. Meanwhile, you slip into the shadows of the economy. So the whole system is broken. And Biden needs to confront that and say, you know, ‘We are going to have to reform the whole system.’ I would wish he’d do something much more extreme, like say the old asylum system is dead. No one is coming in through that process. You have to apply from your home country.”

Hoover said this was Trump’s policy and asked if Biden should follow what his predecessor did for political reasons.

Zakaria answered affirmatively, adding, “And it’s also the right policy because the old asylum system is being gamed by millions of people.”

The policy sent nearly 70,000 migrants to stay in Mexico until their hearings in immigration court, according to the American Immigration Council. The Biden administration has taken back numerous Trump-era border policies, including his Muslim travel ban and border wall project.

“I still think what Biden should do is declare an emergency national security crisis, send National Guard, shut down the amnesty process and say we’re going to redo it,” Zakaria said. “It’s quite possible courts will throw out elements of what he does, but this is a place where Biden should learn something from Trump. Much of what Trump did, the Muslim ban, banning TikTok, the shutting down the border, was overturned by courts.”

“But people remembered that he was trying,” he added. “Where he was. Symbolically, it helped him a lot. Biden needs to do something symbolic at the border. Bill Clinton had a great line. He said the American people don’t need the president to succeed, but they need to catch him trying. He’s got to be seen to be trying to do stuff.”

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