Samantha Bee may have recently admitted to pulling some comedic punches when it comes to President Biden, but on last night’s Full Frontal, she went hard on the new administration’s immigration policy. After calling BS on Republicans’ bad faith inflammatory rhetoric about the “border crisis,” the host took Biden to task for failing to end some of the Trump administration’s draconian policies.
As Bee points out, the Biden administration has yet to fulfill the president’s campaign promise to increase the number of refugee admissions to 62,000. And while the administration is not expelling children at the southern border as Trump did, conditions for the record number of unaccompanied minors held in US custody remain shameful.
“Right now, in 2021, under a Democratic administration, children who are alone, vulnerable and terrified are being held in government custody for a month,” Bee explained. “Americans should care that kids are being held in custody that long. We’ve held convicted white collar criminals for less than a month.”
In the second half for the segment, Bee detailed Biden’s failure to rescind Trump-era policies like Title 42, which allows border patrol to expel undocumented migrants to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But, as Bee explained, the CDC has said that there is no evidence that expelling migrants slows the spread of the coronavirus.
“Biden and Democrats need to keep the promises that got them elected, which means undoing Trump’s heartless immigration policies,” Bee insisted. “This administration needs to raise the refugee cap, end Title 42, and work with Congress to stop funneling hundreds of thousands of people through a broken, backlogged asylum system.”
The segment aired shortly after Biden addressed a joint session of Congress, in which he urged lawmakers to pass his proposed immigration reform bill. He even floated the possibility of passing popular elements of the bill individually, like a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, undocumented workers, and people with temporary protected status. However, the president made no mention of the situation at the border right now.
