President Joe Biden, then a U.S. senator and soon-to-be running mate with future Democratic President Barack Obama, made comments in 2007 about U.S. border security and leaving U.S. weapons behind following any withdrawal from Afghanistan that directly conflict with his current policies and his evacuation from the southwest Asian country.
Biden made the comments during a town hall meeting on Aug. 12, 2007 while campaigning for president in Winterset, Iowa.
Just the News : “While discussing elements of U.S. border strategy, the 2007-vintage Biden sounded unlike the 2021 President Biden, who has drawn widespread condemnation for lax border enforcement policies that have brought unprecedented numbers of illegal aliens into the United States.”
“It matters how you control your borders, not just for immigration, but it matters for drugs, terror, a whole range of other things,” said Biden circa 2007.
He went on to tell the audience that the U.S. should put tighter controls in place along its borders.
“I’ve been arguing for the need to put more protection at our borders, meaning that you have more border guards,” he said.
“You have to have a significant increase in the security at the border, including limited elements where you actually have a fence,” Biden said.
And while Biden 2007’s fence would not be constructed along the entire nearly 3,000-mile-long border, he noted it would be built in key places.
“There are certain places people can go over and under a fence, but you can’t take 100 kilos of cocaine over and under a fence,” Biden said.
“And what you do when you have limited places where fences are in populated areas, you force these drug dealers and others around making it easier to apprehend because there’s fewer places that come through,” he noted.
Just the News continued: “Biden told his audience that U.S. jobs should be reserved for Americans, and that would-be immigrants should go through a rigorous process of being allowed to remain in the country.”
“We should provide for a means by which there is earned access over time, where you have to learn the language, where you have to demonstrate you have a job, you’ve paid your taxes, you pay back taxes,” Biden said then.
“You have a tamper-proof card you go back to the area of embarkation. To be able to be registered you have a criminal background check.”
The process would be “a path made available to people that demonstrate they are good citizens,” Biden added, noting it would be a decade-long process.
“That’s about how long it would take,” he said.
Biden went on to talk about what withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan would look like.
“It will take a year to get the American troops out,” Biden said.
“You hear me now, that’s the truth,” he said, as captured in a C-Span news clip that is now circulating on social media. “It will take a year to get them physically out.
“Now if you leave all the equipment behind, you might be able to do it in seven months. And you leave those billions of dollars of weapons behind, I promise they’re going to be used against your grandchild and mine someday,” he added.
Former President Trump and other Republicans have riffed on Biden for leaving tens of billions of dollars in American military hardware behind for the ruling Taliban.