It wasn't surprising that protesters interrupted former Vice President Joe Biden's closing debate remarks Wednesday, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who served with him under President Barack Obama, said Thursday.
"The former vice president has said it took us a while to get it right,” Johnson told Fox News' "Fox and Friends," explaining that Biden had been referring to the creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy under Obama in 2012.
But Johnson recalled how, in March 2014, Obama had told him it was time to figure out a "more humane" method for deportations and to focus more on removing criminals.
"The overall number of deportations went down," recalled Johnson. "We weren't just rounding up everybody but, the percentage of those deported that were convicted criminals went up, which was good for public safety.”
RAICES Action, an immigrant rights group, took credit for the protests against Biden and has complained about the Obama administration's deportations record.
Also on Thursday, Johnson said the Mexican government still is not doing enough to deal with asylum and refugee issues, as there are still people traveling through and not being stopped until they reach the U.S. border.
“I'm concerned that the agreements we’ve made with the government of Mexico need to be sustainable,” said Johnson. “The Mexican government needs to do a lot more to build their own system of dealing with refugees, dealing with asylum, building up their border security on their southern border with Central America because you have a lot of people who are still venturing all the way through Mexico north to get to the United States and they’re stopped at our border and that number is probably piling up as we speak.”