Uncle Joe says illegal immigrant DACA recipients 'more American than most Americans are'

Ramblin' Joe

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that illegal immigrants under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are "more American than most Americans are."

Biden — speaking at a 2020 presidential campaign event at Iowa Central Community College — told the crowd that "these kids have come, they've done well, most of these kids ... there's a lot of them, and they're not just Hispanic or Asian Pacific Islanders ... and they, in fact, have done very, very well. In many cases, they're more American than most Americans are because they have done well in school. They believe ... the basic principles that we all share. I think they should be, in fact ... put on a path to citizenship."

President Donald Trump ended DACA in 2017, but the move was blocked by several federal courts. However, it appears the Supreme Court will issue a final ruling on DACA early this year.

One of the nation's largest immigrant rights groups — United We Dream Action — protested against Biden ahead of last week's Democratic presidential debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Buzzfeed News reported.

"He does not have any idea of the pain they caused kids, families, parents who were separated from their kids. The pain is irreparable pain," Elsa Osorio, 45 — whose husband was arrested by ICE agents after a routine traffic stop and deported to Mexico under former President Barack Obama's administration in 2011 — told the outlet.

Media outlets also took Biden to task for incorrectly saying the Obama's administration didn't lock illegal immigrants in cages.

"We didn't lock people up in cages. We didn't separate families. We didn't do all of those," he said during last September's Democratic debate.

In November, the AFP News Agency withdrew a story criticizing the Trump administration for holding over 100,000 illegal immigrant children in detention after the outlet discovered the number actually came from the Obama era.