Obama claims Trump 'did not solve' immigration 'problem.' The numbers tell a different story

Former President Barack Obama stumped for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Detroit on Tuesday, where he asserted that her Republican rival, former President Trump, failed to address the immigration "problem." 

Immigration consistently polls as a top issue for voters in the 2024 election. The Biden-Harris administration has come under withering attack from Trump for reversing his border policies and permitting record high numbers of migrants to cross the southern border unlawfully.

At a rally for the Harris-Walz ticket, Obama acknowledged that "immigration is a real issue at our borders." But he pushed back on criticism of Harris for neglecting to address rampant illegal immigration in her four years as vice president and claimed that Trump's promise to start "the largest mass deportation in the history of our country" isn't a real plan. 

"Wasn't Donald Trump president for four years?" Obama said. "Wasn't he in charge before you? If rounding up and deporting millions of desperate people, many of them who are women and children, if that's the answer to everything, why is it that the number of undocumented immigrants basically stayed the same when he left office?" 

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"When [Trump] took office, he did not solve the problem," he added.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Obama's claim that the number of illegal immigrants "basically stayed the same" when Trump left office is not true.

During Trump's first term, the highest number of illegal border crossings occurred in 2019, when 851,508 people were apprehended or found inadmissible at the southern border, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That number dropped to 400,651 in 2020, when Trump invoked authority under Title 42 to expedite deportations because of public health concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

When President Biden took office in 2021, he immediately set about reversing Trump's immigration policies. On his first day, his administration paused most ICE arrests and deportations from the interior U.S. – a move that was blocked by a federal judge following a lawsuit from Texas.

Later, the Biden administration rolled out new guidelines to ICE in 2021, prioritizing national security threats, violent criminals and recent border crossers for deportation. Biden also halted construction of Trump's border wall and ended his "Remain in Mexico" policy, which required asylum seekers to wait outside the country for their claims to be processed.

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Following these actions, illegal border crossings soared to 1.6 million in fiscal year 2021. They hit a record high of 2.2 million the next year, before falling slightly to just over 2 million in FY 2023. 

Most recently, border crossings have steeply declined after the Biden administration announced tighter restrictions on immigration over the summer. The president issued an executive order that suspended the entry of migrants across the border once it reached a certain level. The policy has led to a more than 50% drop in border encounters. 

Looking forward, Trump has vowed, if elected, to relocate military troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and authorize ICE to raid workplaces and round up criminal illegal aliens for deportation. 

Harris, on the other hand, has not articulated a specific plan for immigration. She has instead criticized Trump for lobbying Republicans against a bipartisan border security bill that failed to advance in the Senate. The bill would have increased funding for border agents, detention facilities and fentanyl detection technology. It also would have restricted entries to the U.S. when border encounters reached a certain level.

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Conservatives opposed the legislation, arguing that it set a floor for high levels of illegal immigration. Some liberals also objected to the emergency border authority contained in the legislation.

Harris has said that any solution to the illegal immigration problem must come from Congress.

"I was just down at the border talking with border agents, and they will tell you… we need more judges. We need to process those cases faster. We need this support for those cases that should be prosecuted. They need more resources, and Congress, ultimately, is the only place that that's going to get fixed," Harris said last week.

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"We worked on supporting what was a bipartisan effort, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Congress, to actually strengthen the border. That border bill would have put 1500 more border agents at the border, which is why I believe the Border Patrol agents supported the bill," she continued. "It would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States, which is a scourge affecting people of every background, every geographic location in our country, killing people. It would have allowed us to put more resources into prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, which I have done as the former attorney general of a border state."

"Donald Trump learned about that bill and told them to kill it because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem." 

Fox News Digital's Adam Shaw contributed to this report.