Democrats in key battlegrounds throw Joe Biden under the bus on the border

WASHINGTON — Democratic candidates in 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 on border policy in key states that will decide control of the Senate and some battleground House races across the country.

“I called out Joe Biden for failing us on the border,” Texas’ Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico says in a recent ad airing in the closing stretch of his neck-and-neck race against Republican Ken Paxton. He also criticized Biden in July for having “failed us on our southern border” as he rolled out his own border security plan.

He’s not alone.

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In Kansas, a longtime Republican stronghold, Democrat Adam Hamilton criticized Biden in a recent debate with Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.

“I want to be crystal clear, first of all: Immigration at the border under Biden was a disaster. That is how we ended up where we are today,” he said. “Second, what we did in response to that has been a disaster for people across the state of Kansas.”

Hamilton, like other Democrats in areas that voted for Trump in 2024, paired their critique of Biden with criticism that the current president has gone too far on enforcement. Polls show many Americans have soured on Trump’s handling of the issue in the wake of immigration officers fatally shooting two Americans in Minnesota and one in Maine this year.

Still, the comments 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 a bid to mobilize their base and win swing voters. Biden’s ratings on the issue tanked amid a surge in migrant crossings during his presidency, which Trump successfully weaponized in 2024.

Entering office in 2021, Biden inherited a Covid-era migration surge that intensified in the United States after he made good on his pledge to roll back Trump-era policies and restrictions, allowing more asylum seekers to stay in the country as their cases were being considered. The collective result was a huge spike in border crossings that became associated with the Biden presidency and brought down his approval ratings.

Even as Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 38%, polls show border security continues to be one of his highest-polling issues, although that number has fallen from the highs of his early second term.

“The Biden administration failed at the border,” Democratic House candidate Paige Cognetti said at a debate Thursday night.

Cognetti, who is vying to unseat Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., in a highly competitive Scranton-area working-class district, later added: “The Biden administration did fail. We need to make sure that the border is secure. It’s a good thing that it is. We do need to make sure that the pathways to citizenship are there.”

In South Carolina, Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews said in a debate, “Democrats have failed on the border.”

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said it’s “very smart” for candidates to distance themselves from Biden and that “there’s nobody contesting that interpretation” that he blundered on the border.

In the 2024 election, “immigration was playing a major, major role, and it was energizing Republicans. And it was the best issue among swing voters for Republicans,” she said. “ICE has gone too far, and that has backfired now.”

She added that the “best messaging” on immigration is “some control for the border plus a humanitarian process for immigration.”

Iowa’s Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek traveled more than 800 miles to Laredo, Texas, to film an ad at the border touting his support for tougher enforcement.

“I came to the border to meet firsthand with the people who work to keep it secure. What happens down here affects us up in Iowa, so we’ve got to address it,” Turek says in the ad. “I voted with Republicans to allow law enforcement to arrest and deport criminals.”

Weeks earlier, he released another ad speaking to Iowans and vowing 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 and Republican-friendly 35th Congressional District against GOP nominee Carlos De La Cruz.

Garcia criticized Trump’s ICE raids as detrimental to the economy. But at a recent forum, he also blamed Biden’s policies for failures at the border and referred to a fatal smuggling conspiracy in 2022 that led to the deaths of dozens of people.

“We’ve also gotten to see, unfortunately, how Biden got it wrong on the border,” Garcia said. “I’ll admit that every single day. We got to see one of the largest migrant fatalities in this district in south San Antonio, with 53 migrants that were locked in a trailer.”

“So we can’t afford to just turn a blind eye to our border,” he added. “But at the same time, we can’t turn a blind eye to what we’re seeing happening on our streets.”