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On Thursday’s broadcast of WBUR’s “Here and Now,” New York Times Senior Writer David Leonhardt discussed the record immigration influx under President Joe Biden and stated that the surge is mainly due to Biden’s policies, despite the inaccurate protests of members of the Biden administration to the contrary, but “Trump went so far on immigration, … lying about immigrants, separating families, that it basically radicalized a lot of Democrats and they became uncomfortable talking about any immigration restrictions.”

Leonhardt said, “I think the main reason it’s happened is the Biden administration loosened immigration policies and President Biden sent very welcoming messages to people during his campaign. He encouraged people to come. And what you had was, for a long time, the Democratic Party had a kind of moderate, mixed message on immigration. Barack Obama really embodied that, which is that Democrats simultaneously said, we want to protect the rights of people who are already in this country, but we also want to enforce border security. And I think Trump went so far on immigration, as you noted, lying about immigrants, separating families, that it basically radicalized a lot of Democrats and they became uncomfortable talking about any immigration restrictions. And so, the Biden administration — and I’ve been talking to them about this, they sometimes like to claim that their policies weren’t the main reason immigration was increasing, that it was events around the world. But I think events have shown that the Biden administration was wrong about that, because they did crack down on immigration in the summer of 2024, and almost as soon as they cracked down on immigration, the traffic at the southern border absolutely plummeted.”

He added that he believes Biden was pushed by others to the lax policies he pursued and Trump “played a big role.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett