On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate JD Vance appeared on Fox News with Jesse Watters to discuss illegal immigration, the Biden administration’s record on the border, and the issue of mass deportations.
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When Jesse Watters asked about mass deportations, former President Trump replied:
Dwight Eisenhower, who people considered a moderate, who probably wasn’t as moderate as people think, Dwight Eisenhower did the largest deportation ever in this country. He was very big on people not coming into our country, breaking our sealed borders, right? And the hardest thing, in a certain way, is exactly what you said, we have to get some very bad people out of this country.
There can be little doubt that a certain percentage of the people flooding illegally across our nation’s borders, including known or suspected terrorists. This statement will no doubt be spun as Trump saying “all illegal immigrants are criminals/terrorists,” which is pretty clearly not the case; although it’s true that every person, regardless of age or origin, who crosses the border illegally has, by definition, committed a crime.
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And as soon as we grab, perhaps, we take a woman with two children, three children, she shouldn’t be here, but the children are beautiful, and all of the sudden it ends up being a front-page story in the liberal newspapers. And, you’re right, it’s a hard thing to do. Harder than a long time ago with Eisenhower, right?
That’s where optics will come in; this will, as the former president points out, be spun into a front-page story not just in the liberal newspapers but in every legacy media outlet. In this, assuming Donald Trump wins the November election and begins a mass deportation program, he will at least have the advantage – yes, the advantage of lame-duck status. Since he will not have a re-election campaign to worry about, this gives him a latitude of action that a politician worried about re-election would not have.
JD Vance, not being the primary decision-maker, would also be somewhat shielded from that decision – although not completely.
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Any mass deportation will be a massive logistical exercise. There are millions of people in the country illegally, and the Trump policy would seem to be to deport as many of them as possible. That will include families, mothers with children, and even some elderly people who have been in the United States for some time; it will also, we can hope, include a large number of the bad actors who have committed horrible crimes in our country.
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The oozing sore that is our southern border is not only a criminal problem; it’s not only an immigration problem. It’s a national security problem, with millions of unknowns already present here, in our country.
Donald Trump and JD Vance understand this. Kamala Harris does not.