Migrants waiting to cross the southern border into the US say they want President Biden to win re-election in November, because they fear they would not be allowed into the country if former President Donald Trump regains control of the White House.
“If it’s Trump, it doesn’t matter how much I work or want to work. They won’t let me in,” pipe fitter Richard Betancourt, 46, told The Free Press as he and hundreds of others wait to cross the border at a makeshift encampment in Matamoros, Mexico.
Alejandra Falcon, 26, who has spent the past eight months traveling to the border from Caracas, Venezuela, also said that if Biden “doesn’t win, I can’t imagine what will happen.”
During Trump’s first term in office, he tried to tackle immigration by cutting down on the number of refugees getting green cards and visas and had attempted to build a wall across the border, but wound up deporting fewer undocumented migrants than his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, The Free Press noted.
Soon after he was voted out of office, though, illegal border crossings surged — and reached an all-time high of 2.2 million in 2022, the Washington Post reported.