Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) declared Monday that the Democratic Party mishandled the critical issue of border security under President Biden by letting millions of migrants into the country over four years, giving Republicans a potent issue to campaign on.
Fetterman took his own party to task on immigration and border security during a debate, aired on Fox Nation, with Pennsylvania’s Republican Sen. Dave McCormick at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
“That’s a mistake that our party made, and that’s the border,” Fetterman told “Fox News Sunday” anchor Shannon Bream, who moderated the debate, which was co-hosted by the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation.
Fetterman said he supports the roughly $150 billion in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that would go toward securing the U.S.-Mexico border and ramping up immigration enforcement within the nation.
“I absolutely support those kinds of investments to make our border secure,” he said, acknowledging “I’ve lost some support in my party” for taking that position.
“I thought the border was really important and our party did not handle the border appropriately. Look at the numbers — 260,000, 300,000 people showing up our borders,” he said, referencing monthly numbers of migrants who streamed across the border under Biden.
“That’s roughly the size of Pittsburgh. Now, that’s unacceptable, and that’s a national security issue, and that’s chaos,” he added, noting Pittsburgh’s population was 303,000 in 2023.
The Congressional Budget Office last year reported the annual net migration under Biden averaged 2.4 million people from 2021-23.
“We can’t pretend we can take care of 300,000 people showing up every month,” Fetterman said.
McCormick followed up on Fetterman’s answer by noting immigration numbers under Biden were roughly equivalent to the population of Pennsylvania.
“If you look at the numbers … over the last four years of the Biden administration, we added Pennsylvania, which has 13 million people. We added that in terms of illegal immigrants coming into our country,” he said.
