Trump Rants About Illegal Immigration, Says the Public Has a ‘Two-Week Memory’
President Donald Trump lamented his second administration has done such a good job closing the Southern border and keeping illegal immigrants out that the American public has already forgot it was a big issue and moved on.
Trump told reporters inside the White House on Monday he would have been better off from a political standpoint stretching out his crackdown on illegal immigrants.
“Even my speechwriters, they say, ‘sir, nobody wants to hear about the border anymore. You’ve done it, it’s an incredible job you’ve done, but nobody wants to hear about it,'” Trump said. “I should’ve taken a couple of years to do it.”
The president said it would’ve been a shrewd political move, since the public often has a “two-week memory” when it comes to accomplishments.
But Trump said he had no choice but to completely clamp down on illegal immigration after he inherited “the worst border maybe in world history” from ex-President Joe Biden. The president said Biden allowed 25 million people to illegally flood the USA on his watch.
“There’s not a third-world country that would have allowed it to happen, where people [were] coming in from prisons and coming in from mental institutions,” Trump said.
The Trump administration announced in July it deported 356,389 illegal immigrants so far in fiscal year 2026, A month earlier, DHS celebrated “zero releases” at the Mexican border over the last year.
Fox News explained zero releases “refers to U.S. border patrol not releasing illegal border crossers into the U.S. interior after apprehension. It does not mean zero illegal crossings or zero apprehensions.”
Trump got onto the topic on Monday after he was asked about the 60,000 people rushing into Spain’s North African province of Ceuta last week.
The footage of the people — the vast majority of whom were men — pouring into Ceuta from the sea and from trucks went viral on X. Trump told reporters his first thought was America was hit even harder by illegal immigration on Biden’s watch.
“When I saw what happened in Spain, I said you know, we had a version of that,” Trump said. “You could say much worse.”
Watch above.
New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!
Comments
↓ Scroll down for comments ↓