Former Democrat and Independent West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin praised President Donald Trump’s second-term policies on immigration, border security, and crime, saying they’re delivering results.
Appearing Sunday on MSNBC’s The Weekend with host Eugene Daniels, Manchin pointed to four straight months without the parole of a single illegal migrant and credited Trump’s crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital.
“I think everyone knows we should have a secure border. I begged the Democrats not to do asylum at the border,” Manchin said. “I think that’s correct. I think the crime in our streets — I don’t have a problem with doing whatever we can, but you just can’t pick people off the street.”
When Daniels pressed him on Trump’s use of the National Guard in Democrat-run cities, Manchin didn’t flinch. “If I was crime-ridden in my state, I’d welcome all the help I could get. Don’t leave me in the lurch,” he replied. “Now they’re going to leave sooner or later. Am I going to go back to where I was? Are you going to help me finance this? People want a crime-free area and they want also secured borders.”
Manchin argued that Democrats need to stop resisting Trump’s security measures and start working with him on broader immigration reform. “The Democrats should be saying, ‘Mr. President, we made a mistake. We’ll work with you on securing the border. Will you work with us on legal immigration?’ We need legal immigration for this country to continue to be the world power, the economic juggernaut of the world,” he said. “And also, it’s the right thing to do. My ancestors came here that way.”
Even Democratic strategist David Axelrod has been sounding alarms about his party’s handling of the border. On the Sept. 12 episode of Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast, Axelrod ripped Democrats for wasting years before addressing the crisis. “It was insane to spend three years before you did something serious about the border,” Axelrod said. “Insane!”
By contrast, former President Joe Biden only signed a border-focused executive order in the last year of his term — after more than six million encounters at the southern border. For months prior, Biden claimed there was little action he could take.
The shift under Trump has been stark. Border Patrol agents made just 6,319 apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border in August, averaging only 204 arrests per day. Nationwide, encounters totaled just under 26,200 — a figure that is 93% lower than the monthly national average under Biden.