“And by the way, this same authorities that the president has used to secure the border, President Biden could have done the same thing but chose not to,” Mullin said.
Mullin then went further, directly blaming Biden-era policies for deaths involving illegal immigrants who were released into the United States.
“So every single death, so when you said a while ago that the blood is on their hands, you are absolutely correct because every single death that has occurred by an illegal that was released into this country underneath the Biden Administration, every one of those is 100% preventable,” Mullen told host Sean Hannity.
“And the Biden Administration turned a blind eye and thank God the American people put President Trump back in office,” he said.
The comments revive one of the fiercest political battles of the Biden presidency: whether the historic surge in illegal immigration was an unavoidable regional phenomenon or a crisis intensified by deliberate policy choices in Washington.
Republicans consistently argued the latter.
From the beginning of Biden’s presidency, GOP lawmakers accused the White House of dismantling deterrence measures inherited from the first Trump administration while failing to adequately respond as encounters along the southern border soared.
The consequences extended far beyond the immediate border region. Major cities, including New York and Chicago, struggled to accommodate large numbers of migrants, while federal immigration authorities faced enormous caseloads involving individuals already inside the United States.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement report covering fiscal year 2023 illustrated the staggering pressure placed on the immigration system.
According to reporting from Just the News at the time, “the backlog of aliens inside the United States awaiting decisions has nearly doubled under President Joe Biden to more than 6 million while arrests of suspected terrorists and violent offenders have also exploded.”
The publication continued: “The year-end report from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement released Friday showed nearly every measure of illegal immigration rose substantially in 2023, candidly admitting the southern border’s being overrun by millions of illegal crossers has taken a major toll on the agency.”
ICE itself acknowledged that the escalating workload was putting tremendous pressure on its personnel.
“While ICE carefully prioritized its resources to meet these evolving mission needs and agency personnel continued to perform at a high standard, these increased demands have strained a workforce that has remained relatively static for the past decade,” the report said, according to the outlet.
The numbers underscored the scale of the problem.
Just the News reported that the number of illegal immigrants in detention increased by more than 40 percent, climbing from 26,299 to 36,845 by the end of fiscal year 2023.
But that figure was dwarfed by the number of migrants living inside the United States while their immigration cases remained unresolved.
The outlet reported that more than 6.2 million illegal immigrants were permitted to remain in the country without detention in 2023, up roughly 30 percent from the previous year and nearly twice the approximately 3.26 million recorded during the final year of Trump’s first presidency.
At the same time, daily illegal crossings at the Southwest border reached extraordinary levels during portions of Biden’s term, putting Border Patrol, ICE and local governments under mounting pressure.
Republicans repeatedly insisted that Biden did not need new legislation from Capitol Hill to reverse the trend.
That argument became especially important during the battle over foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, when House Republicans demanded meaningful border-security measures as Washington debated sending billions of additional dollars overseas.
Then-House Speaker Mike Johnson was among the most vocal critics.
Johnson also blasted the Biden administration after U.S. officials discussed immigration issues with Mexican leaders while negotiations with Republicans in Congress remained deeply divided.
“Johnson made the comments in response to a joint statement released Thursday from the United States and Mexico on a meeting Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador held with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday,” the Washington Examiner reported then.
The broader fight ultimately became a defining issue of the 2024 presidential election, with Trump promising to restore aggressive enforcement and sharply reduce illegal entries.
Mullin’s comments now seek to turn the contrast between the two administrations into a question of accountability rather than simply policy.
His argument is straightforward: If Trump could use presidential authority to tighten the border, Biden could have done so as well.
For Republicans, that distinction matters because it challenges years of Democratic claims that Congress needed to pass additional legislation before the executive branch could fully confront the crisis.
Mullin is now arguing that the human cost makes that debate far more serious than an ordinary Washington disagreement over immigration policy.
His accusation — that deaths connected to migrants released under the Biden administration were “100% preventable” — is certain to provoke fierce pushback from Democrats and immigration advocates.
But it also puts renewed attention on a question that haunted the Biden administration throughout its four years in power: How much of the border crisis was beyond Washington’s control, and how much resulted from decisions made inside the White House?
For Mullin, the answer could not be clearer.
