Biden blames Trump for border chaos and hints at executive action in Univision interview

President Joe Biden faulted former president Donald Trump for the chaos at the US-Mexico border in an interview with Univision, and hinted that he might take executive actions to reduce migrant crossings.

Mr Biden made the remarks in an interview with Mexican journalist Enrique Acevedo as part of his efforts to improve his standing with Latino voters.

Republicans have sought to criticise Mr Biden for his immigration policies, with the GOP-controlled House of Representatives going as far as to impeach his Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Last year, crossings at the US-Mexico border reached an all-time high. The Department of Homeland Security reported that 301,000 migrant encounters in December.

Mr Biden pointed to the fact that he supported bipartisan negotiations which would have swapped aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in exchange for measures that would have curtailed immigration and increased border security.

Some Democrats criticised the legislation for being too draconian on migrants, though Mr Biden said that he supported provisions for Dreamers, migrants whose parents brought them to the United States as children.

“I told them I was going to go back and get Dreamers et cetera., but the thing it did do, it provided for a significant more personnel to make an orderly transfer and allow legal immigration to increase, not decrease and diminish illegal immigration,” he said.

But the legislation negotiated by Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut died after Republicans opposed it when Mr Trump did not support it.

“This is literally the truth, what happened was when Trump found out that I liked it and I