Democratic lawmaker Pramila Jayapal rebuked President Biden for "using the same tools" that former President Trump employed to control the flow of migrants over the southern border.
"I know that is not who President Biden is, but using the same tools that Donald Trump used is actually a big problem for Democrats to be able to continue to show those differences and keep our base with us," Jayapal said in an interview on CNN Tuesday night.
"This is a mistake that Democrats have made over and over again," she continued.
BIDEN ORDER TO BLOCK MOST ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHEN CROSSINGS SURGE, AS ELECTION NEARS
Biden announced executive actions on Tuesday to stop illegal immigrants and asylum seekers at the southern border if crossings reach a certain level.
"We make the mistake of trying to out-Republican the Republicans," Jayapal said in response to concerns that the border crisis is a losing issue for the Biden administration.
"They're not going to come over to us if they're fighting us on immigration," Jayapal said of Republican voters.
As for independent voters, Jayapal said she believes that "they don't want partial enforcement policies that turn away very vulnerable asylum seekers."
Jayapal also called on her party to "lean in as Democrats to an inclusive vision of immigration," and to "point out all the differences that we have with Donald Trump, who is xenophobic, racist, [and] has said terrible things about immigrants."
‘IT IS INSULTING’: BIDEN BORDER ORDER TAKES HEAT FROM DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS
"I think the president could have handled this differently," Jayapal said. "I’ve told him that directly," she added.
Jayapal, who is a ranking member on the Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee, claimed that Democrats also want "order at the border."
"We all want to see an immigration system that is orderly, that allows people to be processed quickly, that allows people to come in with different legal pathways, and Republicans have continued to block us in doing that," she said.
"But enforcement-only actions like what the president is doing today, which mirrors something that Donald Trump did … is not going to work because people are not going to stop coming when they are fleeing terrible circumstances," she said.
The Biden administration announced that the president's executive actions on the border "are not permanent" and will be "discontinued" when the number of migrants recedes to a manageable level, per a White House press release.
In response to Fox News Digital's request for comment, the Biden campaign shared a statement from spokesperson Kevin Munoz, who said that despite the demands of a "broken immigration system[,]" Trump and Republicans "have made clear they only want chaos and partisan politics as usual."
"Every American should know that Trump proudly killed the strongest bipartisan border bill in a generation – siding with fentanyl traffickers over the Border Patrol and our security," Munoz continued.
Fox News' Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
