Texas Senate candidate James Talarico is slamming Joe Biden’s border failures in a new ad, even as his own record shows years of opposing state enforcement spending.
The Democrat’s campaign released the spot on Monday, October 12, with Talarico declaring he had called out the former president for letting the southern border collapse. Fox News Digital reported the ad as part of a late push to sound tougher on immigration in a state that has carried the heaviest load of illegal crossings for years.
Talarico is the progressive former teacher and state lawmaker now running for U.S. Senate against Republican Ken Paxton. The race remains close as November’s midterms near, and the ad arrives after months of questions about whether a left-wing record can sell in Texas.
In the commercial, Talarico puts the blame squarely on Biden.
"I called out Joe Biden for failing us on the border,"
That line is new packaging for an old problem. During Biden’s presidency, Talarico’s campaign could not give Fox News Digital a single example of him publicly criticizing the White House on the border. The tougher talk only surfaced once he launched a statewide bid and faced claims he is too progressive to win.
More than seven years earlier, Talarico sat down with The Austin Chronicle and described Texas border security spending as waste. At the time, the state had a two-year deal putting about $800 million toward the border, $400 million a year, the entire state budget line then aimed at stopping illegal immigration.
Talarico wanted that money moved.
"We're also sending about $800 million per biennium to the border with Mexico for ‘increased border security,’"
He continued:
"I'd rather take that money and put it back into public education and help increase the basic allotment, for instance,"
Physical enforcement itself drew his scorn. Boats, planes, and Border Patrol agents on the line, he said, cost too much and fixed nothing.
"Putting a bunch of boats, planes and border patrol agents on the physical border is expensive and also does not solve the problem,"
"Everyone will admit it's just political grandstanding," he added. "Certain lawmakers want to appease extreme parts of their base. And they do it by pumping money we don't have down to the border."
Those remarks came long before the Biden-era surge that overwhelmed Texas cities and ranches. They also came before Talarico began calling himself a “border security” Democrat on the Senate trail.
Voters watching the new ad are left with a simple timeline: redirect the money in 2019, stay quiet while Biden held office, then attack Biden once a statewide race required a different tone. That pattern matches other late recalibrations around the former president, including family pressure captured when Hunter Biden says he begged Joe Biden to quit the last presidential race.
Spokesperson JT Ennis pushed back when Fox News Digital asked about the shift. He cast Talarico as the only candidate with a border plan blessed by sheriffs from both parties in the border counties.
"James is proud to be the only candidate in this race who has unveiled a border security agenda endorsed by Republican and Democratic border county sheriffs,"
Ennis added that Talarico wants more Border Patrol agents and backs arrests and deportations for violent criminals and human traffickers, “not moms and babies.”
The campaign did not supply the sheriff list or the full text of that agenda in the exchange. Nor did it produce the missing public criticism of Biden from the years when illegal crossings hit record highs.
Talarico’s earlier rhetoric cut harder against enforcement than the new ad suggests. He once said it was “time to tear down this secret police force” when talking about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He referred to illegal immigrants as his “constituents.” He called Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s border measures “atrocities” and accused the governor of “hunting” illegal immigrants. As a former teacher he said he had “taught a lot of undocumented students” and claimed those students showed more patriotism than Americans.
None of that language appears in the fresh commercial. The ad is built for a general electorate that has watched Texas shoulder the costs of open-border policy and now sees results under different leadership in Washington.
Department of Homeland Security figures cited in the coverage show border crossings under the Trump administration fell to a new record low in 55 years during 2025. That drop followed a series of enforcement steps that reversed the earlier surge. Texas still carries the busiest stretches of the border with Mexico, and state leaders have spent heavily for years trying to fill gaps left by federal policy.
Talarico’s 2019 answer was to shrink that state effort and move the cash into schools. His 2025 answer is to blame Biden and promise stronger security. The gap between those two positions is the story the ad tries to paper over.
Similar whiplash has defined other corners of the Biden years, from internal Democratic second-guessing to courtroom fights still shaping policy. One recent example involves a Biden-appointed judge bars DOJ effort on state voter lists and citizenship checks, another front where federal power and state authority collide.
Paxton, the GOP opponent, has built his brand on aggressive law-and-order and border fights. Talarico needs crossover and moderate votes in a state that has not elected a Democrat to statewide office in a generation. Sounding alarmed about Biden’s record is one way to chase them. Owning the full 2019 transcript is harder.
The ad also landed after a brief disappearance from the trail earlier this month. Viral rumors placed Talarico at a behavioral health center. He reappeared on a Friday, rejected those claims, and said he had been recovering from the flu. The campaign moved quickly from damage control back to message discipline on immigration.
That sequence, absence, explanation, then a border ad, fits the larger rebrand. Progressive priorities that once included dismantling ICE and treating enforcement as grandstanding are now framed as support for agents and targeted deportations. The only candidate with a sheriff-endorsed agenda, the campaign says. The record still contains the call to strip border funding and the silence during the Biden years.
National Democrats continue to live with the political bill for that period. Family accounts of private pleas for Joe Biden to step aside, such as the parallel report that Hunter Biden says he told Joe to leave the 2024 race, show how late the reckoning arrived even inside the household. Talarico’s ad is a smaller version of the same late correction, delivered for a Texas audience that already lived the consequences.
Legal aftershocks from the Biden era keep surfacing as well. Separate coverage has tracked how a Biden-appointed judge freezes routine decisions in the capital region, a reminder that personnel choices outlast the administration that made them. Border policy works the same way: the crossings fall only after the rules and the people enforcing them change.
Talarico wants credit for noticing the failure now. Texas voters can stack that claim against the 2019 interview, the missing Biden criticism, the ICE rhetoric, and the decision to treat state border money as optional. The ad gives them the new line. The earlier statements give them the baseline.
In a close Senate race, the baseline still matters. Illegal immigration is not an abstract debate along the Rio Grande. It is a daily cost in hospitals, schools, and sheriff budgets. Candidates who once called enforcement expensive grandstanding now discover the public never agreed. Talarico’s commercial tries to catch up. The calendar, and the old quotes, make the sprint obvious.
Texas has heard softer lines on the border before. It tends to vote for the ones that treat security as non-negotiable.