Former President Donald Trump stood beside House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday and spoke of a united effort to address illegal immigration and election integrity.
The joint conference, held at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, comes as some of the former president's biggest allies in Congress have pressed Johnson over his efforts to advance a foreign spending bill to boost Ukraine's war against Russia. But the former president on Friday spoke highly of the speaker, as Johnson once again criticized the administration of President Joe Biden for its handling of the U.S. southern border.
"President Biden has created a catastrophe, and he did it by design," Johnson told reporters while also praising Trump's policies on migration, such as the Remain in Mexico policy.
Johnson and Trump also both touted new legislation being introduced by House Republicans aimed at increasing election security before November, including requiring voters to prove their U.S. citizenship before heading to the polls.
"Our bill will establish new safeguards," Johnson said. "It'll put us on par, by the way, with virtually every other democracy around the world."
The Context
Trump has long claimed that increased illegal migration into the United States is fueling violent crime across the country, telling reporters on Friday that America has become "like a dumping ground" for other nations and urging Biden to address it.
"He should close the border immediately. He needs no legislation. He doesn't need this gentleman," Trump said, referring to Johnson. "He doesn't need anybody."
Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee who is set to challenge Biden for reelection in November, has campaigned on promises to crack down on immigration if he is elected for a second term, including delivering on his past vows to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to data by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), encounters along the southwest border have increased over the past three years. A record number of encounters—301,981—were reported in December, although numbers have started to decline since the start of this year.
What We Know
Johnson, who has also been repeatedly critical of Biden's border policies, said on Friday that a rise in illegal migration in the U.S. also poses a threat to election integrity.
"It doesn't matter which political party that any American is in, they have the same desire," the speaker told reporters Friday. "They want safety and security."
Johnson also announced that House Republicans were pushing forth legislation that would require voters to prove their American citizenship before voting in federal elections. It would also require states to remove any noncitizens from their existing voter rolls.
Under current federal law, voters are required fill out a form swearing that they are citizens in order to register for federal elections. For many states and local elections, however, registration requires a driver's license, passport or other proof of citizenship.
"We will do everything within our power to ensure that we do have free and fair elections in this country," Johnson told reporters. "If we don't have that in a constitutional republic, we have nothing. It's the basis of who we are as a nation."
Views
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of Americans believe that increased immigration "leads to more crime" in the country. But research has shown that migrants who have entered the U.S. illegally do not commit crimes at a faster rate than native-born Americans.
In a 2020 study on the state of Texas released by the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, in 2018, the rate of illegal immigrant criminal convictions in the state was 45 percent lower than that of native-born Americans living there. And according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, non-U.S. citizens made up only 15.4 percent of those sentenced to federal prisons nationwide in 2022.
Still, Republicans have repeatedly claimed that increased immigration has led to a rise in crime in the U.S., and Trump has asserted that many migrants are coming from prison systems in their home countries, and has called them "not human."
"The Democrats say, 'please don't call them animals. They're humans,'" Trump said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this month. "I said, 'no, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals.'"
The White House has repeatedly stressed that Biden's policies have worked to secure the border, saying in a statement last month that the president "has secured more resources for border security than any President before him."
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment on Trump and Johnson's press conference Friday.
What's Next?
Polling shows that the majority of American voters disapprove with Biden's handling of immigration, with only 31 percent of respondents in a recent Associated Press/NORC survey indicating that they approve of the president's policies.
Still, Biden and Trump appear to be neck and neck in the race for the White House. An AP/NORC poll released on Friday showed that most Americans disapprove of both candidates: While a majority of the 1,204 adults surveyed said that Biden has hurt the cost of living and border security in the U.S., nearly half said that Trump has hurt voting rights, abortion laws and climate change.
Update 04/12/24 7:28 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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