Joe Scarborough accused of racism after tirade about Biden ‘luring’ immigrant children to US border

‘The Biden administration right now is the one that’s luring these children to the border with the promise of being able to get in,’ Mr Scarborough fumed

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough blames the Biden administration for ‘luring’ immigrant children to the border (MSNBC)

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough sparked a firestorm of angry tweets on Tuesday with an early morning rant about immigration, during which he accused the Biden administration of “luring” children to the United States’ southern border and urged the government to “send them back.”

“The Biden administration right now is the one that’s luring these children to the border with the promise of being able to get in,” Mr Scarborough fumed on his MSNBC show.

“So they can’t say, ‘Oh, well, they’ve come all the way across the desert, we can’t just let them go back,’” the host continued. “No! You can figure out a way, a humane way, a safe way, to transport them back home, I suspect.”

The comments quickly drew outraged comments on Twitter, including accusations of racism.

“Hey #JoeScarborough your racism is showing again,” one user tweeted. “Look in the mirror and repeat what you said this morning. You’re looking at a bigot.”

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“Joe’s anti-immigrant diatribes sure are ugly,” another commented under a clip of the show. “How many are we going to have to listen to?”

One of the people speaking out on Twitter had just been on the show herself. Caitlin Dickerson, a staff writer forThe Atlantic, was a guest on Morning Joe on Tuesday, and tweeted that she hadn’t had time to challenge all the “inaccuracies” in Mr Scarborough’s tirade.

“It is not a ‘Biden administration policy’ that allows unaccompanied minors to request legal protection at the border,” Ms Dickerson wrote. “That is the American asylum system, codified into law by congress in the Refugee Act of 1980.”

The writer also challenged Mr Scarborough’s numbers on court appearance rates by immigrants who crossed the border, saying they were far higher than the host had told his viewers.

“The general implication was that requesting asylum is unfair or illegal,” Ms Dickerson tweeted. “It’s not.”

President Biden campaigned against the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants during the 2020 election, including the infamous policy of separating immigrant children from their parents. 

As president, Mr Biden has proposed a sweeping legislation package called the US Citizenship Act, which aims to reform the US immigration system and provide an eight-year path to citizenship. The bill has been introduced in the Senate, but has not yet come to a vote.