WASHINGTON — Democratic candidates in the 2026 battleground races are directly criticizing Joe Biden’s handling of border security when he was president, seeking to neutralize a political vulnerability and signaling a new path for the party on the thorny issue.
Candidates are throwing the ex-president under the bus over border politics in key states that will decide control of the Senate and some congressional races across the country.
“I blamed Joe Biden for failing us at the border,” Texas Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico said in a recent ad airing in the final stretch of his neck-and-neck race against Republican Ken Paxton. He also criticized Biden in July for “defecting on our southern border” as he rolled out his own border security plan.
He is not alone.
In Kansas, a longtime Republican stronghold, Democrat Adam Hamilton criticized Biden during a recent debate with Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.
“I want to first be very clear: Immigration at the border under Biden was a disaster. That’s how we got to where we are today,” he said. “Second, what we did in response to this was a disaster for the people of the state of Kansas.”
Hamilton, like other Democrats in areas who voted for Trump in 2024, coupled his criticism of Biden with criticism that the current president has gone too far on enforcement. Polls show many Americans are unhappy with Trump’s handling of the issue in the wake of immigration agents fatally shooting two Americans in Minnesota and one in Maine this year.
The comments nonetheless reflect a recognition that the issue of border security remains a vulnerability for Democrats, as Republicans continue to accuse them of promoting “open borders” in an effort to mobilize their base and win over influential voters. Biden’s ratings on the issue have fallen amid a surge in migrant crossings during his presidency, which Trump managed to weaponize in 2024.
Taking office in 2021, Biden inherited a Covid-era migration surge that intensified in the United States after fulfilling his promise to reverse Trump-era policies and restrictions, allowing more asylum seekers to remain in the country while their cases were reviewed. The collective result was a huge increase in border crossings that became associated with Biden’s presidency and lowered his approval rating.
Even as Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 38 percent, polls show that border security continues to be one of his most controversial issues, although that number has fallen from the highs early in his second term.
“The Biden administration has failed at the border,” Democratic House candidate Paige Cognetti said during a debate Thursday night.
Cognetti, who is vying to unseat Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., in a highly competitive working-class Scranton-area district, later added: “The Biden administration has failed. We need to make sure the border is secure. It’s a good thing that it is. We need to make sure the pathways to citizenship are there.”
In South Carolina, Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews said during a debate, “Democrats have failed at the border.”
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said it was “very smart” for candidates to distance themselves from Biden and that “no one disputes this interpretation” that he got it wrong at the border.
In the 2024 election, “immigration was playing a major, very important role, and it was energizing Republicans. And it was the best issue among swing voters for Republicans,” she said. “ICE went too far, and it backfired.”
She added that the “best message” on immigration is “some control at the border as well as a humanitarian process for immigration.”
Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek traveled more than 800 miles to Laredo, Texas, to film a border ad touting his support for tougher enforcement.
“I came to the border to meet directly with the people who are working to keep it safe. What’s happening here is affecting us in Iowa, so we need to do something about it,” Turek says in the ad. “I voted with Republicans to allow law enforcement to arrest and deport criminals.”
A few weeks earlier, he released another ad addressing Iowans and promising that he would “work with anyone” to fix immigration — “including President Trump, to secure the border.”
Closer to the border, Democrat Johnny Garcia is trying to win Texas’ redrawn, Republican-friendly 35th Congressional District against GOP candidate Carlos De La Cruz.
Garcia criticized Trump’s ICE raids as damaging to the economy. But at a recent forum, he also blamed Biden policies for failures at the border and discussed a deadly 2022 smuggling plot that resulted in the deaths of dozens of people.
“We also got to see, unfortunately, how Biden got it wrong at the border,” Garcia said. “I admit it every day. We were able to witness one of the largest migrant deaths in this neighborhood in South San Antonio, with 53 migrants trapped in a trailer.”
“So we cannot afford to turn a blind eye to our border,” he added. “But at the same time, we cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening on our streets. »
Gn usa
