Architect of failed border deal hits Biden on immigration policy in SOTU

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) jabbed President Biden for his comments on the failed border bill in the State of the Union address last week.

Co-host Jake Tapper played a video of Lankford mouthing, “That’s true,” when Biden said the failed bipartisan Senate deal on the border would have hired more border patrol agents and immigration judges to help speed up the asylum process. Lankford said that while what Biden said was true, he was leaving out some of the executive actions he could take on the border.

“I could hear some of my colleagues around me saying none of that’s true. And I was actually listening. The president said, ‘No, that part actually is true.’ It would have hired all those additional agents, it would have expedited the process, would have also changed the asylum standard so we can go through much faster,” Lankford said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“The only way to be able to solve this problem right now legally, is to be able to change the asylum standard, and to be able to have much faster hearings,” he added.

Lankford, one of the co-authors of the bipartisan bill that failed last month, then took aim at Biden for not mentioning some of the executive actions he could take now on the border. It’s unclear what actions Biden could take on immigration without a bill in Congress.

“The problem is the president also left out some of the things that he could do right now he’s choosing not to do. He has a very open parole system that literally thousands of people today are coming across and being rapidly paroled,” Lankford said.

“He is not actually doing the what’s called ‘the last, in first out’ for hearings, to be able to deter people from coming across by having faster hearings in the process. So there are multiple executive actions for whatever reason the president’s choosing not to do, but there’s also legal authorities that need to be done as well,” he added.