Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on President Trump's Cruel Immigration Second-Term Policy Agenda

The Trump Administration's anti-immigrant agenda does not represent our American values, period. All they have to offer is four more years of hateful rhetoric and division and policies that will end America's historic role as a symbol of freedom and prosperity, and as a beacon of hope for those fleeing violence and oppression anywhere in the world.

We are who we are because generations of immigrants, hopeful and striving, left behind everything they knew to make their home in the United States. And we are better and stronger because of it. My ancestors boarded coffin ships on the Irish Sea with dreams of a better future for their children. We must not cut off that hope for the immigrants seeking safety or opportunity today.

President Trump and his administration choose cruelty and exclusion at every turn, whether you are fleeing the brutal, socialist Maduro regime in Venezuela hoping to receive Temporary Protected Status that Trump and Senate Republicans continue to deny, or a Dreamer who has never known any country other than the United States that the Trump Administration is seeking to deport, or one of the thousands of children who were ripped from their parents' arms at our southern border by this Administration with no plan to be reunited.

This agenda is designed to do one thing only: divide our communities with cheap, xenophobic rhetoric, and demonize those seeking to make legitimate asylum claims in the United States to find a life of safety for themselves and their children.

The only America Donald Trump believes in is an America divided. I believe in the United States of America, an America that is strengthened by its diversity, proud of our heritage as a nation of immigrants, and where families belong together. Those are the values that shape my immigration policy. We have to vote out Donald Trump in 4 days to make sure we can undo his cruel, anti-American agenda, and ensure the United States is once more the global leader standing for freedom, prosperity, and liberty for all."