Donald Trump kicked off the week by taking the focus off his highly criticized Cabinet nominees and moving it to his highly controversial deportation plan. The President-elect acknowledged early Monday he is prepared to declare a national emergency and use “military assets” in his mass deportation program.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who was named last week White House Press Secretary for Trump’s second term, had announced the day after the election that Trump would deport “millions” starting on day one.
“The American people delivered a resounding victory for President Trump, and it gives him a mandate to govern as he campaigned, to deliver on the promises that he made,” Leavitt had said. “Which include, on Day 1, launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country.”
Leavitt also said that the “mass deportation operation” would include “millions of undocumented immigrants.”
Back in 2018, Trump “complained about ‘having all these people from shithole countries come here’ — and singled out Haiti, El Salvador and Africa as examples — he also added that, ‘we should have more people from Norway’,” NPR reported at the time.
Just past 4 AM ET on Monday, Trump on his Truth Social website reposted a statement from right-wing anti-immigrant activist Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch and a senior member of the secretive organization the Council for National Policy. (CNP has been called the “scariest Christian nationalist group you’ve never heard of,” and “probably the most dangerous,” by Americans United.)
Fitton had written on November 8: “GOOD NEWS: Reports are the incoming @RealDonaldTrump administration prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”
“I want to again emphasize caution here. Fitton mashed together two different things (the border and mass deportations). There is no National Emergency Act authority to use the military for deportations, while we know Trump used the [NEA] in the past for border wall construction.”
Leavitt’s claim that Trump had been given a mandate has been deemed false by political experts, with one pundit calling it a “lie.”
According to the Cook Political Report, while winning the popular vote, Trump did not win a majority. He beat Vice President Harris by just over 1.6 million votes, or just 1.7%, with nearly 800,000 more votes in California alone still to be counted.
— (@)
CNN’s Harry Enten on Monday confirmed Trump’s margin over Haris ranks just 44th out of 51, and called it “weak, weak, weak.”
Allies of Donald Trump have been told to avoid words “like ‘camps’” when
discussing the president-elects promise to execute “the largest deportation” operation in U.S. history, Rolling Stone reports.
“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” a Trump ally told RS. “Apparently some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”
Despite Trump’s vow to enact mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, members of the president-elect’s team are now concerned about the
negative historical comparisons generated by the word “camps.”
Some top Trump advisers get so annoyed when the media refers to his publicly detailed immigration-crackdown plans as including “camps” that they’ve cautioned the president-elect’s allies and surrogates to stop using the word “camps” during the current presidential transition, according to two sources familiar with the situation.
As Rolling Stone reports, the term “camps”
originated in Trump’s own orbit. Last year, Trump’s deputy chief of staff pick Stephen Miller “routinely and specifically using the word 'camps' to describe what he and his boss wanted the military to build, should they retake power in 2024.”
According to the report, the Trump campaign even encouraged the
New York Times to speak with Miller about Trump’s immigration platform.
“And yet, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the
Times article infuriated some of Team Trump’s senior staff, who privately said they believed the reporting made their candidate — the once and future leader of the free world — appear extreme and borderline fascistic, especially on ‘the concentration camps framing,’ a Trump adviser notes,” RS reports.
READ MORE: 'Part of the plan': Smerconish lifts the veil on Trump’s 'progressively more controversial' Cabinet
Indeed, Trump himself has affirmatively stated “it’s possible” the US will have to build new detention centers for undocumented immigrants.
Donald Trump’s former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Tom Homan, who has been named the “border czar” for the incoming second Trump administration, says the U.S. Armed Forces and special operations teams will need to be involved in the border efforts President-elect Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail.
Trump on Sunday announced Homan will be “in charge of our Nation’s Borders,” and “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” CBS News reported.
“You absolutely need military and special ops,” Homan told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo Tuesday morning, citing Mexican drug cartels. Homan added, “President Trump has said he’s going to declare these cartels terrorist organizations.”
“So is the U.S. Military involved here, Tom?” Bartiromo had asked. “Are you hoping that the military helps, because you’re dealing with some really serious uh serious people on the other side, as President Trump once called them, these ‘bad hombres.’ I’m talking about the drug cartels.”
“What are you gonna do about these drug cartels who are obviously working with the Chinese Communist Party to push fentanyl into the country as well? Will you need the military for that and who else will you be leaning on to take on the drug cartels?”
Calling him the “soon-to-be the deporter in chief,” The Washington Examiner reports that Homan anticipates “broad support from local, state, and federal police, as well as retired police who want to help the government carry out this operation.”
“Thousands of retired agents, retired Border Patrol agents, retired military [have called] that want to come in and volunteer to help this president secure the border and do this deportation operation,” Homan said. “It’d be great to have local law enforcement assist ICE.”
In a Fox News interview Sunday, “Homan said the military wouldn’t be rounding up and arresting immigrants in the country illegally and that ICE would move to implement Trump’s plans in a ‘humane manner,'” CBS added.
Earlier this year Homan said that “while he thinks the government needed to prioritize national security threats, ‘no one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.'”
“You’ve got my word. Trump comes back in January, I’ll be in his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”
On CBS News’ “60 Minutes” last month, Homan was asked: “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?”
“Of course there is,” he replied. “Families can be deported together.”
President-elect Donald Trump will only have his big mouth to blame if he can't get his biggest campaign promise past a battalion of activist attorneys armed and ready for legal war, those lawyers reportedly say.
A network of hundreds of lawyers say they're better prepared than ever before to challenge Trump's anti-immigrant policy promises that include mass deportations and camps, the New York Times reported Monday.
“The Trump team might think they are ready,” Camille Mackler, the chief executive of Immigrant ARC who began organizing against Trump in 2017, told the Times. “But so are we.”
Immigrants rights attorneys told the Times they've been preparing for months to combat workplace raids, immigrant roundups, asylum restrictions and detention centers.
The Times noted Trump was often vague about how he would enact mass deportation of millions of people, a pledge the outlet describes as "all but impossible with current enforcement resources."
Becca Heller, founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project, which sued the government over Trump's Muslim ban, told the Times she believed fellow advocates will have three significant advantages: experience gained during his first administration, rule of law, and the former president's bombast.
“Trump has told us what to expect — hate and persecution and concentration camps," Heller added. But, "he can’t act outside the bounds of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."
Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who fought family separation, told the Times, and the nation, to expect an onslaught of lawsuits.
“We have spent the last nine months planning for this, and are prepared to go to court as often as necessary," said Gelernt. "Just like the first time."
Benjamin Johnson, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said his organization is also well prepared to protect their clients' rights in court.
“He has threatened to use powers — some that haven’t been used in a century, since World War II — to arrest, detain and imprison people without any judicial review,” Johnson said. “We are going to have to find ways to meet the moment.”
Bruna Bouhid-Sollod, senior political director for United We Dream Action, told the Times her organization is preparing to provide “know-your-rights” training and mount letter-writing campaigns urging elected officials to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
“We are cleareyed about the challenges ahead,” Bouhid-Sollod said. “That is the big difference between 2016 and 2024.”
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
For more than a year, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged a vast immigration crackdown that includes ending birthright citizenship, reviving border policies from his first time in office and deporting millions of people through raids and detainment camps.
Perhaps no state is in a better position to help him than Texas. And no state might feel the impacts of such initiatives as much as Texas.
About 11% of immigrants in the United States, 5 million, live in Texas. The state is home to an estimated 1.6 million undocumented persons — the second-most in the country after California. It is also led by Republican elected officials who are politically in lock-step with Trump.
When Trump left office in 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott surged resources to the state’s 1,254-mile border with Mexico through a border security mission, Operation Lone Star, that has so far cost $11 billion in state money. It includes the deployment of thousands of Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guard troops to patrol the border. He started building a state-funded border wall after Biden ended Trump’s wall project. He sent busloads of newly-arrived migrants from border towns to northern cities led by Democrats.
Those state police and Texas soldiers could help Trump achieve his marquee campaign promise of launching mass deportations, according to immigration lawyers.
“We are in uncharted territory,” said Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL, an organization that offers education, social and legal services to immigrant families in the Houston region — home to about half a million people who are living in the country illegally.
FIEL — a Spanish acronym for Familias Inmigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha, which translates to Immigrant Families and Students in the Fight — tells their clients to prepare for “anything that can happen,” Espinosa said.
“We tell people that this is kind of like having a plan for a fire: You don't know if a fire is gonna happen, you can't predict when a fire’s happening, but you have a plan on how to exit,”Espinosa said
On the campaign trail, Trump has called for a variety of measures that would significantly change immigration, asylum and the lives of immigrants.
He’s said he will try to end automatic citizenship for children born to immigrants in the country. He’s suggested he would revoke legal status protections that the Biden administration has given to people from specific countries, like Haiti and Venezuela. He’s said he would re-implement policies from his first term, like ones that banned people from Muslim-majority countries and required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for the duration of their asylum cases.
But no proposal has received as much attention — or support from his fans — as Trump’s pitch to deport as many as 20 million people he’s said are undocumented. It is unclear how many undocumented people are in the country.
The last time the U.S. government undertook such a massive effort was in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration, whose plan of pairing federal authorities with local police Trump has pointed to as a model for his ambitions.
“When there are state-level law enforcement officers and policymakers who support those initiatives, we might see an immigration enforcement authority that is far larger than Immigration and Customs Enforcement alone,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic.
Texas, having deployed police and military for immigration enforcement on its own accord, fits the bill better than any state. While the Biden administration tried checking Texas’ authority — most notably suing to stop a new law that would let state police arrest suspected undocumented persons for illegal entry into the country — Trump has signaled he is eager to work with the state.
“When I’m president, instead of trying to send Texas a restraining order, I will send them reinforcements,” Trump told a crowd in Las Vegas in January. “Instead of fighting border states, I will use every resource tool and authority of the U.S. president to defend the United States of America from this horrible invasion that is taking place right now.”
Immigration lawyers say for Trump to accomplish his deportation promises, he could also rely on existing law enforcement agreements between federal and local authorities while expanding the use of “expedited removal,” a fast-track removal process that does not involve a person having to go before an immigration court.
Plus, he’s inheriting a ramping up of the nation’s deportation system that happened in the final year of Biden’s administration, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
From May 2023 through March 2024 alone, the Biden administration processed more migrants through expedited removal, 316,000, than in any prior full fiscal year, according to a paper Bush-Joseph co-authored. The administration is on track to deport more people than Trump’s administration did in its first four years.
“My guess — I think it's a rational guess — is that there is going to be a lot of cooperation and synthesis between the state of Texas and the federal government,” said Joshua Treviño of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin. “I don't think that Texas is gonna say, ‘Okay, it's done. I'm gonna wrap up Operation Lone Star.”
Abbott’s office did not respond to an interview request. He’s previously said the state will continue its border clampdown until there is a president in the White House who enforces immigration law. He’s also said the state won't stop its efforts until it has control of the border.
“The people who are in charge of bringing people across the border illegally are the drug cartels. The drug cartels haven’t closed out business, they haven’t gone away,” Abbott said in May in Eagle Pass. “We cannot relent in our security of the border.”
On Wednesday, Abbott told reporters that Trump will need time to bolster federal immigration enforcement and implement his border reforms, during which Texas must serve as a “stopgap.” He added that Texas “will have the opportunity to consider” repurposing Operation Lone Star money once Trump’s policies are in place.
Trump’s promised policies have the potential to upend the lives of millions in the state — as well as some big industries that rely on immigrant and migrant labor.
Immigrants account for roughly 18% of Texas’ population, but make up 40% of all employees in construction and a significant portion of workers in the oil and gas and mining industries, according to research papers published in September by the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates for immigrants.
“The impact that it could have on Texas could be monumental,” said Espinosa, of FIEL in Houston. “This could devastate a lot of industries here in Texas.”
Disclosure: The Texas Public Policy Foundation has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Trump, now the president-elect, reportedly plans to conduct a massive deportation operation of undocumented immigrants on his first day in office.
“The American people delivered a resounding victory for President Trump, and it gives him a mandate to govern as he campaigned, to deliver on the promises that he made,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, told Fox News Wednesday, Newsweek reports. “Which include, on Day 1, launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country.”
Axios reports Leavitt says that “mass deportation operation” includes “millions of undocumented immigrants.”
Back in September, Trump infamously had attacked President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and immigrants.
“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country,” Trump said. “And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
That same month Trump called for “remigration,” the forceful deportation of immigrants, including those in the U.S. under lawful and unlawful circumstances. He vowed to “end the migrant invasion of America,” and falsely characterized some programs that allow legal entry to the U.S. under law.
“We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries, terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App), revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).”
Remigration, as NCRM reported at the time, is advocated by some in the European far-right, nationalist, and fascist movements.
Marine Le Pen, the French far-right nationalist who promotes anti-immigration and anti-Islam positions, viewed remigration as so extreme she broke with her allies over it. Earlier this year Politico Europe reported Le Pen said “that she was in ‘total disagreement’ with the reported discussions on ‘remigration.’” Those discussions included the forced deportation of some French citizens, who were described as “unassimilated citizens.”
The Washington Post reports Trump “has made 41 distinct promises for his first day in office, including mass deportations and banning transgender women from sports.”
In September, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and MAGA allies publicly pushed the debunked claim that Haitian migrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio — population 57,910 — are eating people's pets.
According to a Sunday, November 3 Politico report, the former president has recently taken aim at an even smaller town: Whitewater, Wisconsin.
With a population of approximately "15,000 in the southeastern part of the Badger state," Politico reports, "Trump said the price of housing in Whitewater had 'soared,' 'diseases are spreading like wildfire' and 'police can’t handle the surge in crime' after being 'flooded … with an estimated 2,000 migrants from Venezuela and Nicaragua, very tough ones, very tough people in that group.'"
Per the report, "local officials, many of whom are nonpartisan or Republicans, have refuted his characterizations and slammed the former president for rhetoric they say distracts from the real problems they are facing" — repeatedly.
"If Kamala is reelected, your town and every town just like it all across Wisconsin and all across our country — the heartland, the coast, it doesn’t matter — will be transformed into a Third World hell hole,'" the MAGA hopeful emphasized during a rally in the nearby city of Prairie du Chien.
"I mean this in all respect to everyone in their beliefs and where they’re at," Whitewater city manager John Weidl told Politico, "but it’s like regular people wandering around Whitewater. It’s all very normal. And sure, there’s more people who speak Spanish, but we had people who spoke Spanish before."
Another city official, Whitewater police chief Dan Meyer, according to the report, "refuted Trump’s claim that there had been a crime surge in the town. While the influx of about 1,000 migrants has posed challenges to the 24 police officers there, he said, it’s mainly been due to unlicensed drivers and a lack of translators. The immigrant 'population, generally speaking, is no more likely to commit a crime than any other [member of] the existing population we have here,' he said."
Trump and his allies first jumped on Whitewater after Meyer and Weidl sent a letter to President Joe Biden last year requesting federal resources to address challenges the city faced due to the quick demographic change. 'None of this information is shared as a means of denigrating or vilifying this group of people,' Meyer wrote, adding: 'In fact, we see great value in the increasing diversity that this group brings to our community.' Days later, the right-wing outlet Breitbart ran an article with the headline 'Biden floods small Wisconsin town with 1,000 migrants.'
Meyer emphasized, "I really think the vast majority of people are supportive' of the immigrant population, and those who aren’t probably haven’t had a whole lot of interactions, or have had a few interactions that weren’t all that positive. But it’s not based on anything other than perception."
27-year-old Keylin Sarahi told Politico that she eventually arrived to Whitewater after fleeing threats of violence in Nicaragua.
"It’s a very peaceful place, very pretty," Sarahi said.
One of Donald Trump's promises for a potential second presidency, includes ending birthright citizenship — which would defy the US Constitution.
During a Senate hearing Thursday, Republican Senator Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) echoed the former president's sentiment.
"For those of you who've been at the border, you also probably saw what I saw," the Ohio lawmaker said. "There are so many pregnant women, I mean, in their 8th or 9th month. Of course, they come here, and that child is a US citizen. Which, personally, I believe we ought to do away with birthright citizenship."
Johnson continued, "We are in the minority of countries that grant that. And it's just another magnet to come here. I hope, under a serious administration, deporting criminals will be reasonably easy. But past that point, it's gonna be really difficult. Because of birthright citizenship, are you really gonna separate an infant from their mother and father?"
Birthright citizenship has long been understood to be required under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The language was included in the constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War to ensure that Black former slaves and their children were recognized as citizens.
The phrase has been generally understood by legal scholars of all ideological stripes to be self-explanatory, but that has not stopped some anti-immigration advocates from pressing an alternative interpretation.
Trump floated the idea of ending birthright citizenship during his presidency, which then-Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (OH) said the MAGA hopeful "obviously" couldn't do, according to MPR News.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) says he wants the U.S. to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment. He even acknowledges that it will separate families.
Former President Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans have been falsely claiming that illegal immigrants have been voting in huge numbers with the blessing of Democrats. But in fact, election laws are quite clear about who can and cannot legally vote in the United States.
According to USA.gov, "Non-citizens, including permanent legal residents, cannot vote in federal, state, and most local elections."
In an article published on October 23, The New Republic's Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling emphasizes that there is no validity to Trump's claim of widespread voting by illegal immigrants. And Houghtaling points to Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reporting that, she stresses, exposes Trump's "election interference fearmongering" as a "nothingburger."
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, recently conducted an audit of 8.2 million registered voters in his state. And the conservative non-MAGA Republican found that out of 8.2 million, only 20 non-citizens were registered to vote.
According to AJC's Mark Niesse, Georgia election officials "canceled their voter registrations and reported them to district attorneys for potential prosecution."
Trump has been claiming that voting by illegal immigrants is widespread enough to sway election results. But Raffensperger found only 20 examples out of 8.2. million.
Trump has been a persistent critic of Raffensperger, falsely claiming that the conservative Georgia secretary of state and two-term Republican Gov. Brian Kemp have been soft on voter fraud.
But Raffensperger, in an official statement, said, "We are committed to ensuring that only U.S. citizens can vote in our elections through rigorous citizenship verification at the front end, and in maintaining the cleanest voter rolls in the nation through continuous list maintenance."
Houghtaling explains, "As part of his election conspiracy, Trump has campaigned on the notion that non-citizen voters are upending the presidential election results and, by extension, American democracy in favor of the Democratic Party. But his focus on the issue belies the fact that it is, of course, already illegal and impossible for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections — including in Georgia, where the individuals who fell through the cracks in the system account for just 0.00024390243902439 percent of the state's voting population."
Never Trump conservative and veteran Washington Post columnist George Will, who supported now-President Joe Biden in 2020, has been vehemently critical of both Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. But after their debate, Will described a possible Harris victory as the "least unpalatable November outcome" for "traditional conservatives" in his September 12 column.
Fellow Never Trumper Peter Wehner even considered that column a Harris endorsement from a "monumentally significant figure in conservatism." But Will certainly isn't enthusiastic about the prospect of a Harris presidency, and he said that if she does defeat Trump in November, he hopes Republicans regain control of the U.S. Senate.
Nonetheless, Will's disdain for Trump remains intense. And in his October 23 column, the 83-year-old columnist parts company with MAGA Republicans on a key issue: immigration — which, Will writes, is a plus for the United States in light of "convulsive demographic changes."
While Trump is calling for mass deportations, Will's column is headlined, "If Demography Is Destiny, Bring On Immigration. We're Going to Need It."
Will's October 23 column draws heavily on the writings of political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, known for his work with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
"Eberstadt, who is incapable of writing an uninteresting paragraph, is an economist and demography-is-destiny savant at the American Enterprise Institute," Will explains. "He says a large excess of deaths over births will be driven not by a brute calamity like the bubonic plague, but by choices: those regarding fertility, family structures and living arrangements, all reflecting 'a worldwide reduction in the desire for children.'"
The conservative journalist adds, "Today, two-thirds of the world's population lives in countries with below-replacement levels — 2.1 births per woman — of fertility."
U.S. demographics, according to Will, make a case for more — not less — immigration.
"One issue in this year's presidential campaign is germane to the convulsive demographic changes that are coming: immigration," Will argues. "Concerning this, Donald Trump is obtuse, and Kamala Harris has, as about most things, vagueness born of timidity."
After Donald Trump, his running mate, JD Vance, and other MAGA allies spent much of September falsely claiming that migrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating peoples' cats and dogs, the former president kicked off October by spewing yet another false claim about migrants.
During his appearance at a manufacturing facility in Waunakee, Wisconsin — a suburb of the state's capital, Madison — the 2024 GOP nominee claimed that there's an app cartel leaders use to drop off immigrants in the United States.
Tuesday's visit comes after Trump also visited the battleground state Saturday, where he slammed President Joe Biden's policies on immigration and blasted his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris over her trip to the US-Mexico border last week, according to The Hill.
"They have an app that's being used by the cartel leaders — people making billions of dollars," Trump said. "The cartel leaders, they can just call the app, and they say where to drop the illegal migrants."
Democratic strategist Ally Sammarco replied via X: "big if true"
Former conservative reporter Eric Owens wrote: "Trump thinks there's Uber for illegal immigrants."
USA Today columnist Rex Huppke added: "Is the app in the room with you right now, grandpa?"
Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to the nation’s southern border to talk about her immigration policies as her opponent, Donald Trump, continues his attacks on immigrants. The Democratic presidential nominee on Friday will travel to Douglas, Arizona, a must-win battleground state, where she is expected to call for more funding and other resources for border security agents including tools to help battle deadly fentanyl. Harris will also target Donald Trump for killing a massive and historic bipartisan border and immigration bill earlier this year.
Politico reports, “Harris will ‘argue that American sovereignty requires setting rules at the border and enforcing them.'”
“She’ll call for more resources for border patrol agents to do their jobs,” and “propose new detection machines for fentanyl at border entry ports.”
“She’ll ‘reject the false choice between securing the border and creating an immigration system that is safe, orderly, and humane,’ and “decry ‘Trump’s failures as president to address this challenge and his recent efforts to kill bipartisan solutions to it’ — and say that ‘the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games.'”
Ahead of her trip the Harris campaign released this video of Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blaming Donald Trump for killing the border bill:
— (@)
The Harris campaign also released a new, hard-hitting ad attacking Trump on the border:
U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona who was on Harris’s vice presidential short list, will join her Friday.
— (@)
“With Harris visiting the border today,” The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote, “I’m hoping that we see some sort of full-throated condemnation of Trump’s attacks on legal immigrant populations and a broader defense of immigration as an affirmative good for the country. That can coexist w/an emphasis on border security.”
Nationally, Harris leads Trump by 2.8 points, according to FiveThirtyEight‘s current polling average (as of publication time.) In Arizona, Trump is leading Harris by just .8%, according to FiveThirtyEight, But a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released Friday shows Vice President Harris beating Trump in Arizona by six points, 48% to 42%.
On immigration, Harris has improved over President Joe Biden’s double-digit deficit against Trump. But she still trails him by three to eight points, USA Today reports.
Later on Friday, Vice President Harris is expected to deliver remarks from the border (watch live below when it happens.)
US Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) s facing fierce backlash on social media after posting a racist response to the Associated Press' Tuesday reporting that a Haitian group is taking legal action against Donald Trump and JD Vance.
Per the report, The Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit, "invoked a private-citizen right to file charges" against the former president and GOP vice presidential "over the chaos and threats experienced by Springfield, Ohio, since Trump first spread false claims about legal immigrants there during" his debate against Kamala Harris earlier this month.
In response to the report, Higgins wrote via X on Wednesday: "Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their a** out of our country before January 20th."
Journalist Justin Baragona shared a screenshot of Higgins' post, writing: "Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) just sent out this tweet. No dog whistle here -- this is a full-on bullhorn."
Journalist Dave Levitan replied on the social media app, Bluesky: "It genuinely feels like we turned some sort of corner recently where national-level politicians feel totally free to say the most racist shit imaginable, and correctly assume they will face zero consequences. Maybe I've memory-holed stuff or am just naive but man does this feel different."
Media Matters for America director of media intelligence Lis Powers added: "A lot of the discussion of the rot in the GOP focuses on Trump … but it’s rotten down to the core."
Mississippi Free Press editor Ashton Pittman wrote: "You used to have to go on the white supremacist haven Stormfront to see vile posts like this on the internet. Now, Republican members of Congress just post Nazi-inspired diatribes out in the open on Elon Musk's app."
JD Vance, the junior Republican U.S. Senator who represents the people of Ohio, is on his tenth day of attacking the twelve to fifteen thousand legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, after he spread the lie that 20,000 “illegal migrants” from Haiti were dropped on the city and started to steal the pet cats and dogs of its residents, and eat them.
The claims have been so thoroughly debunked that The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday published a report: “How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants—After Being Told They Weren’t True.”
“Estimates of the number of immigrants vary, but Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday that roughly 15,000 Haitians immigrated to Springfield over the past four years,” The Journal reports. “They were able to immigrate legally under a Biden administration policy granting Temporary Protected Status to Haitians as part of a program created by Congress in 1990 to protect immigrants from countries deemed too dangerous to return to.”
That 1990 law, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), was signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush.
But according to Senator Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who has a law degree from Yale, the law is illegal and so are the Haitian immigrants, which is false.
At a small rally in North Carolina on Wednesday (full video), a Politico reporter told Senator Vance, “the majority of the Haitians in Springfield came under TPS, so they are here legally. And I know you’ve expressed a lot of your issues with the TPS program and wanting to change that under a Trump Vance administration, but I guess my question for you is, if you become the vice president under a Trump administration, what will you guys do about the migrants that are already there since they did arrive legally? And a follow up to that, if you plan to deport them, how would you do that legally?”
Vance did not answer any of those questions.
“Well, look,” he replied, seemingly frustrated, “this is, this is a media and Kamala Harris fact-check that I want to, I want to clarify and clear up right now.”
“Now the media loves to say that the Haitian migrants, hundreds of thousands of them, by the way, 20,000 in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of them all across the country, they are here legally.”
“And what they mean is that Kamala Harris used two separate programs, mass parole and temporary protective status. She used two programs to wave a wand and to say, ‘we’re not going to deport those people here.’ Well, if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien. An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal. That is not how this works.”
Senator Vance is wrong.
First, that is exactly how it works.
The Biden administration extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) (not temporary protective status, as Vance called it) twice, given the dire circumstances in Haiti.
There is nothing “illegal” about the program, nor are the immigrants here under the program “illegal,” as the Ohio freshman senator falsely insists.
Vance continued his remarks, to applause, calling the TPS program “completely bogus,” and “straight out of George Orwell.”
“That makes her border policy a disgrace and I’m still going to call people ‘illegal aliens,'” Vance vowed, attacking Vice President Harris, as the audience cheered.
“Who in this room, who in this country, consented to allowing millions of aliens to come into this country?” he asked, as some in the audience shook their heads no.
Vance is taking more heat over his latest comments.
“Bro needs to give his law degree back,” remarked MSNBC legal contributor and correspondent Katie Phang.
“What a phony loser @JDVance continues to be. He used to love immigrants. Now he blood libels them. Just like how he used to call his idol Trump ‘an American Hitler,'” commented The Nation’s Dave Zirin.
“This is just shocking,” declared former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. “Mr. Vance is blatantly calling a legal action illegal. I’ve studied my whole life how democracies break down. This is how it happens folks. I hope he really doesn’t believe this. Politicians say a lot of crazy things during elections. I fear he might.”
“When you hear people refuse to make distinctions between legal and illegal immigration, it’s safe to assume they want to use the latter as a tool to go after the former,” observedattorney Mark R. Yzaguirre.
“This is a straight up fascist project from JD here,” exclaimed Dante Atkins, an expert in strategic communications and campaign management.
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ — National Guard members on the Texas-Mexico border have added pepper ball guns to their arsenal, firing at migrants who are gathering on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande or trying to break through the tangle of concertina wire strung along the border.
Migrants interviewed in Mexico say they’ve been shot by the rounds, which leave welts and bruises. It’s the latest escalation by Texas at the southern border through Gov. Greg Abbott’s multibillion-dollar initiative, Operation Lone Star.
The state has deployed thousands of National Guard members to patrol the border since the initiative began in March 2021. The pepper ball launchers, which shoot munitions containing a chemical that causes irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, are a new addition.
The weapons resemble paintball guns. They’re powered by a carbon dioxide cartridge and can hold about 180 rounds, according to a video recently posted on the official Operation Lone Star YouTube page and later shared by the governor’s office. The goal is to get all National Guard members certified in using the weapon.
"We've had some instances where we have caught migrants or members of the cartel cutting the c-wire and trying to send people through," Spc. Aiden Hogan says in the video, referring to the concertina wire the state has deployed along parts of the border. He doesn’t say how they identify the targets as members of cartels. "We've been able to send them back with deploying the pepper ball launcher."
The Texas National Guard is using pepper balls at the border in El Paso to deter migrants from trying to cross the border and request asylum. Video by: Laura Duclos for The Texas Tribune.
The balls are to be shot in the general direction of migrants, not directly at them, to break up groups and deter them, according to the video. But migrants interviewed by The Texas Tribune said some people have been hit. And people who help migrants at the border say they are worried about the continued escalation of tactics by state forces.
On an early weekday morning in May, a few hundred migrants said they were sleeping on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande when National Guard soldiers on the American side fired pepper balls.
The migrants, some of whom had been camping for several days waiting to cross through concertina wire, said they fled from the riverbank, attempting not to breathe in the irritant.
A migrant woman, who declined to be identified out of fear that soldiers would retaliate against her, shared a video of the aftermath that showed her coughing while her daughter held onto her, while a boy standing nearby has red streaks on his face. The woman said one of the projectiles hit her daughter in the head.
“Look how they left the boy, with tears,” a man is heard saying. “Look how they left the little girl too, they also got her mom.”
Nicolas Gonzalez, a 46-year-old Colombian migrant in the group, pointed to small bruises near his elbow and hand, which he said were caused by the pepper balls.
“They have no respect for us, they don’t care that there’s pregnant women or children here” he said. “They treat us worse than animals, like they are hunting us down.”
Gil Kerlikowske, former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection who oversaw the implementation of the same technology at the agency amid scrutiny over agents’ use of force, said the pepper balls can do serious damage to people.
In one high-profile incident, a young woman in Boston died when she was shot in the eye with a pepper ball by police trying to control a crowd gathered around Fenway Park to celebrate a Red Sox playoff victory.
“They’re not really non-lethal,” Kerlikowske said. “No one should just write this off as well, you know, an irritant. They can be very dangerous.”
Using the pepper ball launchers requires a lot of training and an understanding of the dangers the weapon can pose, Kerlikowske said.
Kerlikowske, who has also led police departments in Seattle, Buffalo and Florida, said police officers are “not going to use tear gas without having emergency medical personnel standing by available to help someone” if they are injured.
Asked for comment for this story, a spokesperson for Abbott defended the border mission without directly addressing the use of pepper balls.
Migrants wait to cross concertina wire guarded by Texas National Guard soldiers along the U.S.-Mexico border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico on May 27, 2024. Some experts are concerned that the National Guard is preventing people from legally seeking asylum. Credit: Paul Ratje for the Texas Tribune
“Texas is utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to this ongoing border crisis, as President Biden's reckless open border policies invite record high levels of illegal immigrants, criminals, and deadly drugs like fentanyl into our country,” said Andrew Mahaleris, the spokesperson.
Last week, Major General Thomas M. Suelzer, leader of the Guard, told a Texas Senate committee that soldiers are trained to “hit an inanimate object” so the pepper ball ruptures.
“We specifically train them: Do not shoot directly at an individual because if hit in the wrong place, it can cause serious bodily injury,” Suelzer testified.
The addition of the launchers comes as troops have experienced an increase in aggression from migrants, Suelzer said, including a soldier who was recently bitten and another who was elbowed repeatedly.
National Guard soldiers can use force to defend themselves or others, Suelzer told lawmakers. As a situation unfolds, troops are trained to first announce themselves or clearly show there is an authority present. Following that, they are to try persuading someone with words — “saying, please stop,” Suelzer said. If the situation escalates, force enters the equation, he said.
“It is primarily used to stop a breaching of the barrier so there’s already been an illegal crossing, people are now crawling through the concertina wire field and we are saying go back and they are not doing it,” Suelzer said. “Now there’s non-compliance.”
But among advocates and people who work with migrants along the border, the use of force is alarming.
Alan Lizarraga of the Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso-based immigrant rights group, said that Abbott’s Operation Lone Star is “putting families at risk.”
“We’ve been really concerned with how this is escalating and how this is playing out on the ground,” he said.
Brian Elmore is an emergency medicine doctor in El Paso who helps coordinate medical help for migrants. In recent weeks, he said he’s treated migrants with injuries — bruises, fractures, muscle strains — that migrants said were caused by Texas National Guard members and in some instances Mexican authorities.
Elmore said he had not witnessed Guard members shooting at migrants or pushing them into the dry riverbank, as migrants have claimed over the last two months, but that the injuries he’s helped treat were consistent with those that would be caused by such use of force.
“I’ve never seen so much desperation in my life,” he said.
Dr. Brian Elmore of Clinica Hope, which gives medical care, food and water to migrants who are waiting to cross the border along the U.S.-Mexico border, speaks to migrants requesting medical attention in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico on June 1, 2024. Elmore is an emergency medical physician at University Medical Center Hospital in El Paso and said he often sees migrants who have been injured on the border. Credit: Paul Ratje for The Texas Tribune
Adam Isacson, a regional security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, said he is concerned the National Guard is keeping out people who are seeking safety and violating the due process for asylum seekers. Under federal law, anyone who entered the country — even those who crossed the border illegally — have a right to request asylum.
“Turning away someone who is asking for refuge is called refoulment and international law regards it to be a serious human rights violation,” he said.
The new strategy is being implemented amid tensions between Texas and the federal government as Texas state troopers and National Guard have flooded areas of the border under Operation Lone Star, launched in March 2021. A new law that would let Texas police arrest people suspected of having entered the country illegally, historically the jurisdiction of federal authorities, remains tied up in courts after the Department of Justice sued Texas to stop it from going into effect.
The Justice Department also sued Texas last year over the implementation of a floating barrier on the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass.
Rodolfo Rubio Salas, an immigration professor at El Colegio de Chihuahua in Ciudad Juárez, said the Mexican government needs to investigate the Texas National Guard’s tactics. He added that Mexican journalists and advocacy groups have reported cases of migrants being injured but the Mexican government hasn’t done anything about it.
“I find the tactics used by the Texas National Guard reprehensible,” he said. “I believe that the main focus should be on reporting and raising our voice diplomatically about abuses of power, improper use of force, and violation of the rights of migrants.”
Eduardo Rojas, coordinator de Litigio Estratégico de Fundación para la Justicia, a human rights advocacy group in Mexico City, said Mexico’s government needs to step up and protect migrants from any force the Texas National Guard is using to deter migrants — especially if the projectiles fired by soldiers are crossing the border.
“If the [pepper ball] bullets cross into Mexican territory, it can be considered a violation of Mexico's national sovereignty,” he said.
After a Guard member shot and wounded a man who was exercising across the border last year, Mexican authorities said they contacted senior officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers to condemn the Guard member’s action.
That shooting followed another of a migrant last year, on the Texas side near McAllen, the first reported shooting by a Guard member posted at the border through Operation Lone Star. The migrant was shot in the shoulder and taken to a hospital for evaluation and treatment.
This story is part of an ongoing collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS). It is supported through FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Former Trump Senior White House Advisor Stephen Miller expressed outrage as news began to break Monday that President Joe Biden will announce protections for about 500,000 undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens, along with making it easier for Dreamers to get work visas.
“The president’s executive action will shield undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens from deportation, allow them to obtain work authorization, as well as ease their path to permanent resident status, the three sources told PBS News,” PBS NewsHour‘s Laura Barrón-López reported. “The announcement will be made at a White House event marking the 12th anniversary of an Obama-era action that protected undocumented youth brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.”
Calling it “New Actions to Keep Families Together,” the Biden White House issued a a fact sheet Tuesday, explaining that “President Biden is announcing that the Department of Homeland Security will take action to ensure that U.S. citizens with noncitizen spouses and children can keep their families together. This new process will help certain noncitizen spouses and children apply for lawful permanent residence – status that they are already eligible for – without leaving the country. These actions will promote family unity and strengthen our economy, providing a significant benefit to the country and helping U.S. citizens and their noncitizen family members stay together.”
“In order to be eligible, noncitizens must – as of June 17, 2024 – have resided in the United States for 10 or more years and be legally married to a U.S. citizen, while satisfying all applicable legal requirements. On average, those who are eligible for this process have resided in the U.S. for 23 years.”
Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy that ripped minor infants and children not only from their parents but even separated them from their own siblings, was outraged.
PBS’s Barrón-López had first shared the details of the Biden plan Monday on social media, noting in part, “President Biden will announce protections tomorrow (Tues) for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens and ease work visa access for some Dreamers, per 3 sources briefed by the White House.”
Miller’s response: “Shorter: Biden to give unconstitutional amnesty to illegal aliens during a border invasion.”
Earlier on Monday Miller had written, “Big news: Biden to announce an unconstitutional executive amnesty for illegal aliens during a border invasion and in the aftermath of multiple gruesome raped and murders of Americans at the hands of Biden-freed illegals. This is an attack on democracy.”
The separations proceeded, NBC News reported in 2020, despite the Trump administration having been warned by its own Dept. of Homeland Security General Counsel, John Mitnick, that: “a court could conclude that the separations are violative of the INA, Administrative Procedure Act, or the Fifth Amendment Due Process clause.”
While not an attorney, Miller is the founder of a law firm that has filed lawsuits to protect white Americans, including “white straight men” and “white males” from alleged discrimination.
— (@)
Miller also has been promising MAGA activists that if Trump returns to the White House, he “will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.” Miller and his America First Legal group are part of Project 2025, which has prepared a plan for the movement to “take the reins of government” in a new Trump administration.
J.D. Vance, the venture capitalist-turned Republican Ohio U.S. Senator, ignited a firestorm when declared support for the deportation of what he claims are 20 million undocumented people in the United States.
Senator Vance came to power thanks in large part to tech billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolling his campaign. Vance’s book, which alleges to speak for the forgotten people in middle America had become a best-seller, while also being criticizedas “an example of poverty porn designed to appeal to the same type of (white) viewer who may believe they understand ‘urban poverty’ because they watched HBO’s ‘The Wire.’ ”
An anonymous Twitter account with a bio that literally says, “Just here to collect liberal tears,” over the weekend had posted:
“I’m so sick of this administration. I’m 23 years old. I’m ready to buy a house and start putting my roots down, but I have to stick to renting because the house market is ridiculous. Vote for the convicted felon. This shit is getting old.”
Former journalist James Surowiecki, author of the book, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” responded: “How will Trump’s policies make it easier for this guy to buy a house? He has no answer. (Literally – I asked.) It’s just ‘Mortgage rates were low under Trump, and they’re higher under Biden, therefore Trump will bring mortgage rates down.’ It’s magical thinking.”
That’s when Senator Vance, a top contender on Trump’s vice presidential running mate short list, decided to ride the wave of anti-immigrant hate that has fueled the ex-president’s campaigns.
“Not having 20 million illegal aliens who need to be housed (often at public expense) will absolutely make housing more affordable for American citizens,” Vance a multi-millionaire according to Forbes, claimed to great criticism. “But I see the left’s strategy of making fun of people for suffering under Biden policies continues apace.”
Housing, including mortgage rates, while high in the U.S. are far higher in other developed nations thanks in large part to the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. economy is the best in the world right now – number one, according to The Wall Street Journal in April.
Vance was quickly scorched:
“You are so full of shit. 20 million people being rounded, put in camps, and deported will break the economy,” declared former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman. “You also act like it will be free to do this. How many billions will be spent to build the fascist ‘deportation force?’ Camps? Flights? What does any of that have to do with interest rates and housing costs? You are a liar and a propagandist. It’s pathetic how someone who was once a Marine is such a morally bankrupt loser now.”
Immigration advocate Thomas Kennedy wrote: “A U.S. Senator is advocating for a mass deportation program so that homes of immigrants can be seized and redistributed. Also the 20 million figure isn’t even accurate. Just a terrible person.”
“This is a dumbass bumper-sticker slogan answer and his own angry hallucination, all showing that the intellect gap between the nutjobs and those considered the GOP’s most sage and sophisticated thinkers is much more narrow that you’ve been led to believe,” responded Los Angeles Tribune investigative reporter Joe Rossi.
“People should take a moment to imagine the amount of terror, violence, expense and destruction that is going to be necessary to deport TWENTY MILLION people. And also, think the won’t just mess up and grab a whole bunch of American citizens while they’re at it?” observed MSNBC host Chris Hayes.
“Let’s deport all the people who build the houses and find out what happens to housing prices. Great plan!” mocked Robby Soave, senior editor of the Libertarian magazine Reason.
“Hitler also carried out mass deportations to create more living space for the Volksgemeinschaft,” reminded journalist Aaron Rupar.
American Immigration Council Policy Director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick weighed in: “Setting aside that there aren’t 20 million undocumented immigrants (actual number is 12-15 million, depending on if you count new arrivals facing removal proceedings in the number), it’s pretty dark to say the US should seize and redistribute millions of peoples’ homes.”
Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall served up this take:
When TIME National Politics Reporter Eric Cortellessa asked Donald Trump in April how he plans to carry out the "largest deportation operation in American history" if elected in November, the ex-president replied: "We will be using local law enforcement."
Local law enforcement candidates — both Democratic and GOP candidates backed by Trump — in Miami-Dade County, Florida, told Miami Herald in a recent interview that they don't plan to assist the former president with this plan.
"As far as I’m concerned, if the law stays the way it is, immigration stays in their lane and I stay in mine," Republican sheriff candidate and veteran police union boss John Rivera told the Florida newspaper.
A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment on how he sees the role of local law enforcement in carrying out his mass-deportation promises. U.S. law states that federal officials can’t deputize state or local law enforcement officers to carry out the work of federal immigration officers without permission from the agency’s head — like, for example, a sheriff. But even the candidate endorsed by Trump in the race — Rosanna Cordero-Stutz — said that she would only be willing to help federal immigration agents in limited circumstances.
The newspaper also notes:
Currently, the county’s Democratic mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, oversees the Miami-Dade Police Department, which would become the county Sheriff’s Office in 2025. Florida rules also require partisan elections for sheriff, meaning Republican and Democratic voters will select their nominee for sheriff in the Aug. 20 primaries. Despite the partisan incentive of Republican candidates to align themselves with Trump, there’s a divide over immigration enforcement between the presumptive GOP nominee and Miami-Dade’s GOP sheriff candidates.
Candidates assert that participating in Trump's deportation ploy "would erode the community’s trust in law enforcement and pull officers away from their ultimate mission of ensuring public safety," the newspaper reports.
Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Joe Sanchez — who's also a GOP candidate — emphasized, "We’re not going to help the president on that one."
Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, less than 24 hours after Democrats saved his job in a “motion to vacate” vote, vowed to “round up” and likely deport all of the estimated 11 million undocumented or unauthorized people living or working in the United States of America.
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday told Johnson, “the President of the United States, the former president who wants to be the next president, said one of his plans in a talk to Time Magazine is to round up the 11 to 15 million illegals, and then go through them and find out who belongs here and who doesn’t. Would you support that?”
“Absolutely,” Johnson, a Christian nationalist, immediately replied. “And President Trump and I’ve talked about this at length, but the challenge we’ll have is finding them. Brian, as you know, they’ve been spread out everywhere, the DHS, Department of Homeland Security, and [Secretary] Mayorkas, the reason we impeached him is because he’s an abject failure and they’re not keeping track of where these people are. So we will have the greatest challenge of our generation to try to find them to round them up first, and that’s a very serious problem.”
Johnson’s promise to “round up” undocumented immigrants also comes less than 24 hours after he appeared on the steps of the Capitol to promote legislation making it illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote, despite there being a federal law on the books that already does so.
“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that’s easily provable. We don’t have that number,” Johnson falsely told reporters.
Last month, in a joint press conference with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Johnson told reporters Democrats are trying to turn undocumented immigrants into voters.
“We only want U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections, but there are some Democrats who don’t want to do that. We believe that one of their designs, one of the reasons for this open border, which everybody asked all around the country, why would they do this? Why would they allow all this chaos? Why the violence? Because they want to turn these people into voters.”
Undocumented immigrants cannot legally vote in federal elections, and studies show the number who do is extremely small.
Meanwhile, the negative impacts on the U.S. economy should Trump deport the nation’s undocumented population would be devastating.
According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, “Roughly Half of Hired Crop Farmworkers Lack Legal Immigration Status.”
The Center for Migration Studies in March examined the effects of mass deportation, versus giving the undocumented legal status.
“The undocumented population comprises 5 percent of the workforce in the United States, working in industries such as agriculture, construction, service, entertainment, and health-care. On a micro level, they help manicure our lawns, take care of our children and grandchildren, clean our homes, wait on us at restaurants, and collect our trash. Without their labor, the US economy would experience a labor shortage which could not be replenished easily, and the costs of goods and services would rise,” CMS reported.
“In addition, the United States is facing a severe workforce shortage, with workers needed in a variety of industries. Mass deportations would only exacerbate these shortages. Moreover, cumulative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would be reduced by 2.6 percent, or nearly $5 trillion over ten years if the 8.1 million undocumented workers were deported. If the undocumented population was legalized, however, the GDP would rise by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. Finally, the nation’s housing market would be jeopardized because a high percentage of the 1.3 million mortgages held by households with undocumented immigrants would be in peril.”
Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo is promoting the thoroughly debunked claim an executive order signed by President Joe Biden allows “illegal immigrants” and “felons” to vote.
Bartiromo, in pushing the false claim, told Fox News viewers, “Republicans are warning that there’s a Biden order, executive order, which allows illegal immigrants and felons to vote.”
There is no such order.
“It doesn’t appear that Joe Biden can win on his policies,” Bartiromo said Wednesday. “A Wall Street Journal poll this morning shows Trump leading Biden in six out of seven swing states, that’s Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, the two are tied in a head-to-head matchup. So how does Biden win? Republicans are talking about the potential of an election that is tampered with. Republicans are warning that there’s a Biden order, executive order, which allows illegal immigrants and felons to vote.”
The conspiracy theory appears to have come from Mississippi’s Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson three years ago, a conspiracy theory Watson himself resurfaced last month.
Fox News several weeks ago reported Watson had sent the U.S. Dept. of Justice a letter “asking it to stop enforcing a Biden executive order that he warns is being used to attempt to register ineligible convicts and illegal immigrants to vote.”
“As you are aware, on March 7, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order No. 14019 which sought to turn the Department of Justice agencies from their historical missions of law enforcement to voter registration and get out the vote operations,” Watson wrote, according to Fox News. “These efforts are an intrusion into state matters and are a misuse of federal revenue and resources. In addition, it appears that these efforts have led to agencies under your charge attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”
The fact-checking website Verify makes clear: “No, Biden’s executive order doesn’t allow ineligible people to vote.” It also says it’s “not true” that Biden’s order “would make it easier for ineligible people to vote.”
A USA Today fact check arrives at the same conclusion: “No, Biden didn’t (and can’t) allow immigrants in US illegally to vote.”
“Experts said the claim is nonsense. Biden has issued no such order, and he does not have the power to decide who votes.” Also, the paper notes, “in 1996, Congress made it illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.”
When he was a state lawmaker Watson voted against making it easier for college students to register to vote, and in 2021, as Mississippi Secretary of State, Watson said “he is worried that the nation will suffer if more ‘woke’ and ‘uninformed’ college students become registered voters,” the Mississippi Free Press reported at the time. The news outlet took a deep dive into Watson’s extensive claims, also debunking them.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber in 2021 highlighted Watson’s remarks, and called them, “just one of many occurrences of GOP officials unintentionally revealing they don’t want everyone to vote.”
House Republicans still have yet to pass the bipartisan US border package that the US Senate approved last month. The bill also includes aid to Ukraine, which the country needs in its fight against Russian aggression, as it is expected to run out of ammunition without financial support from the United States, according to Politico.
CNN host Boris Sanchez and US Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) got into a testy exchange Thursday regarding Sanchez's questions about why GOP House members refuse to budge on the bipartisan legislation.
"I'm gonna do anything I can to marginally improve the situation at the border," Barr insisted.
"On that note about, perhaps, doing something that would improve the situation even if it's not perfect," Sanchez replied, "I want to compare what's in this spending bill to that bipartisan bill that Republican Senator James Lankford (R-OK) put out last month. That one would have actually provided more funding for border security. It would include more than half a billion dollars for the border wall, which is something that Republicans have demanded. It would have funded 50,000 detention beds as opposed to 40,000. On top of that, it would have expedited deportations, cracked down on asylum claims, limited humanitarian parole — also allowed the president to shut down the border of crossings past a certain number. And it would have provided $60 billion in funding for Ukraine, which it badly needs right now. Why support this bill, when that bill went so much further and did so many things that Republicans have been asking for, for a long time?"
Barr commented, "Valid and legitimate question, Boris, but what you failed to mention in that list of very positive reforms and including the Ukraine assistance that I support — what it also included was codifying the illegal crossings. That so-called bipartisan border bill or immigration reform bill, also provided $7 billion dollars to sanctuary jurisdictions, that would be a huge, additional magnet for illegal migration. That's not what we need right now."
The CNN host shot back, "The bill didn't codify allowing illegal crossings. It set a threshold of undocumented crossings that would have allowed the executive to say shut down the border right now. That's very different than saying we're going to allow us through. That's a different interpretation of what [the package] did. And I'm citing Senator Lankford own words who described this as the 'most conservative immigration package put forward in a generation.'"
The Kentucky lawmaker commented, "Look, James is a friend, and he's a good man, and he is well-intentioned in what he tried to do. But his hands were tied because he was negotiating with open border people who support amnesty. The problem we have in that bill was that it put in federal law an amount of illegal crossings that simply does not exist in current law."
Sanchez disagreed, saying, "The idea that he wanted to negotiate with people that were asking for amnesty — that bill didn't contain anything related to amnesty. Democrats essentially conceded, and they gave Republicans what they wanted without a pathway to citizenship."
Barr insisted, "Boris, it had 7 billion dollars for amnesty jurisdictions. You're just wrong. That's not true. That bill would be a magnet for more illegal immigration. And look, what we need is HR.2. What we need is border security. We need to reinstitute the successful policies of the Trump administration. We need to finish the border wall. We need to remain in Mexico. We need the migrant protection protocols. We need to end this disastrous catch and release that resulted in the murder of Laken Riley and others.
Sanchez shot back, "That bill would have done that, sir. That bill would have ended the parole program."
The GOP lawmaker said, "The American people are sick and tired of this administration's dangerous policy that's resulted in 300 individuals on the terror watchlist apprehended at the southern border under his watch. And how many 'gotaways' — we don't even know. 1.8 million 'gotaways' that the border patrol has identified. That doesn't even count the number of individuals who they haven't even detected. Americans are dying of fentanyl overdoses. The cartels are exploiting the southern border. The Chinese communist party is working with the cartels to exploit this. Kentuckians are dying and at record levels because of fentanyl coming across our southern border. This is a crisis that every American, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, it's totally unacceptable what is happening at the southern border. And it's a homeland security, national security crisis. It's a crime crisis, and — you know what? It could be fixed overnight this if this president actually wanted to secure the border. And he clearly does not."
Sanchez added, "I think any executive action that he might take to shut down the border or to take steps that [former President] Donald Trump I'm took would be blocked by federal courts, as the steps that Donald Trump took actually were blocked by federal courts. It is very hard to say that all of the issues caused by immigration are just on [President] Joe Biden, when they've been happening for a generation, sir."
Barr shot back, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why is it, though, if that's true, if if the executive actions don't make any difference and the courts really intervene, why is it that illegal crossings are so much higher today under Joe Biden than they were under President Trump?"
Sanchez said, "I'm not disagreeing with you on the question of whether the executive orders have been effective. It's clear that they haven't, the numbers aren't trending in that direction. But some of the more extreme executive orders that Republicans have demanded that the White House take, just like with President Trump, they would have gotten blocked by a federal courts."
The Republican congressman insisted, "No they wouldn't have. That's not true."
Sanchez said, "Ok. Former President Trump and executive orders that he pushed forward — that same judge would have done the same thing to Joe Biden. In fact, I'm pretty sure he did when it came to certain specific policies wrapped around remain in Mexico. Nevertheless, Congressman Andy Barr, I look forward to picking up this conversation with you in the future. There's a lot to talk about. We appreciate your time, sir."
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/1c58afed8b4d2268134d4a3cb8aa6b91/0527 Juarez Stakeout PR 17.jpg)
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/6adbb702c5121fe929d4c988e2e24601/0601 Clinica Hope Border PR 14-2.jpg)
