Joe Biden has admitted he regrets using the word “illegal” to describe nursing student Laken Riley’s alleged murderer and kidnapper, Jose Antonio Ibarra, during his State of the Union speech last week.
The back-track by the President follows significant criticism from Democrats after his address, which saw the House floor descend into chaos over the lightning-rod topic of Riley’s death.
The president was trying to drum up support for a bipartisan border security bill when Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican congresswoman from Georgia and long-time Biden critic, shouted: “It’s about Laken Riley”.
Democratic representatives clamoured for Taylor Greene to “shut up” before the joint session descended into a full-on shouting match.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, who Biden called "an illegal" is charged with nursing student Laken Riley's kidnapping and murder
Facebook/Clarke County Sheriff's OfficeBiden sparked further outrage with another gaffe, when he mistakenly called the student “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal” – the latest in a line of verbal mix-ups for the Potus.
In an interview with MSNBC, the Potus was asked if he regretted referring to Ibarra as “an illegal”, to which he replied “yes”.
Biden said: “And I shouldn't have used illegal, I should've… It's undocumented.
“And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about on the border was his – the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood.
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The President said he should have used the word "undocumented" instead following Democrats' criticism
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“I talked about what I'm not going to do, what I won't do. I'm not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect.
“Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing, we have to control the border and more orderly flow. But I don't share his view at all.”
As the race for the White House begins to heat up, Biden and Trump have traded blows over immigration.
In February, both the President and former President visited border towns in Texas to deliver addresses on immigration – a topic on which Trump is more trusted, according to polling by Reuters.
Biden is trying to push through a bipartisan border security bill which had failed to make it through the Senate – a stumbling block the President blamed on his predecessor, who he claimed demanded lawmakers to block the bill.
Trump has been ruthlessly critical of the incumbent’s stance on immigration on the US-Mexico border, and has promised “the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals in American history” if elected.
The 45th president has accused Biden of deliberately importing “millions of illegal aliens” into the US, which he labelled a “catastrophe”.
In 2023, US Customs and Border Protection processed 2.4 million migrants on America’s southern border – the highest amount ever recorded by the agency.