Former Vice President Joe Biden is the target of a new Spanish-language ad campaign from the Committee to Defend the President, a pro-Trump super PAC, which launched its $255,000 ad buy with just three days before the state’s Democratic presidential caucus on Saturday. 

The ad criticizes Biden for “lying” about fixing the country’s immigration system under the Obama administration and accuses Biden and Obama of having “separated families and put children in cages” — reversing some of the notable criticisms of immigration policy at the U.S.-Mexico border under President Donald Trump. 

Underlined by ominous music and black-and-white imagery of Biden, the ad ends with “Joe Biden already lied, don’t let him do it again.”

Biden has often faced criticism for the number of deportations during Obama’s tenure — more than 3 million by 2016 — but the ad appears to reference the separation of some migrant families by border officials during a surge of unaccompanied minors in 2014. 

However, there is little evidence to support the claim that the Obama-era rules ultimately had a similar outcome to the zero-tolerance policies enacted later by the Trump administration, which, according to a 2019 report from the ACLU, separated more than 5,400 children from their families. 

Once the front runner in the Democratic field, Biden finished a distant fourth and fifth place in Iowa and New Hampshire and has faced pressure to win states with larger minority voter populations such as Nevada and South Carolina. 

His bid has become even more complicated with the emergence of billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has flooded states voting on Super Tuesday and beyond with hundreds of millions of dollars in television and digital advertising.

At a Culinary Union picket line Wednesday, Biden told reporters that “[Bloomberg’s] been a Republican his whole life” and sharply criticized the billionaire’s use of former President Barack Obama’s image in his campaign advertising.  

Update, 2/25 at 11:00 a.m. - This story was updated to include the size of the ad buy

Watch the ad below. For a full list of all ads run during the 2020 election cycle, visit our Ad Tracker here.