Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders offered President Donald Trump's unusual admiration on Sunday in an interview with ABC News, celebrating Trump's commitment to securing the Southern border.
When host John Carl asked what the president was doing in his second term, Sanders said he was supporting Trump to ensure that he “crash fentanyl” and “we're getting stronger.”
“Do you think Trump is right?” asked Jon Karl, ABC News' “This Week” anchor.
“I think we are cracking down on fentanyl and making sure our borders are getting stronger.
Bernie Sanders on Trump's doing the right thing: “Participating fentanyl, make sure our borders get stronger.pic.twitter.com/jpcduqxk5y
– Newswire (@newswire_us) March 23, 2025
Trump's predecessor, President Joe Biden, oversaw the encounters of 8.5 million immigrants on the US-Mexican border in his first four fiscal years. The pace of net transition to the US was at the fastest level since at least 1850. (Related: Biden oversees the biggest immigration surge in US history, according to data)
President Trump took office under the promise to deport dangerous criminals who illegally came to the United States. Border anxiety has reached the lowest level in history recorded in February, the president's first inauguration month. Last week, Trump summoned the alien enemy laws and deported nearly 300 suspects from the Tren de Lagua gang to CECOT in El Salvador, one of the world's most brutal prison systems. (Related: Trump evokes wartime power and targets foreign gangs for “immediate anxiety, detention, removal”
Sanders has qualified for him as he agrees with Trump's commitment to border security but does not support the president's deportation campaign. (Related: “That's wrong”: Megadner who leaves the Democrat says Bernie Sanders and AOC's anti-orical key tour backfires)
“He wants to deport 20 million people in this undocumented country,” Sanders said. “Well, you do that, you destroy the whole country.”
“Trump's billionaire friends are not going to choose crops in California that feed us. They don't work in meat-stuffed homes,” Sanders insisted.
After a press conference at Borderfield State Park held in San Isidro, California on May 7, 2018, Deputy Director of Immigration and Immigration Enforcement, Thomas Homan, will shake hands with Border Patrol agents. The session visited the border with Associate Ice Director Thomas D. Homan to discuss the Trump administration's immigration enforcement measures. (Photo: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)
Sanders often fights on immigration. While running for president in 2020, he vowed to decriminalize illegal border crossings, opposed to all deportation while acknowledging that large-scale illegal immigrants can curb wages for American workers.
“But don't you think that exploitation will lower wages for domestic workers?” Vinamin Appelbaum, a member of the New York Times editorial board, asked the senator in a January 2020 interview.
“That's true. Now we have someone who is being exploited. If you're not documented, why am I going to pay her $12 an hour?” Sanders replied.
Sanders rejected Open Borders entirely in 2015 in an interview with then-editor-in-chief of Vox Ezra Klein.
“Open border? No, that's the Koch brothers' suggestion,” Sanders insisted. “It will make everyone in America poor. You are abolishing the concept of nation-states, and I don't think there is anything in a country that believes it.”
