Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) offered a glimpse into how former President Donald Trump would carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants in the United States if elected next month.
In the first and only vice presidential debate between Vance and Democratic foe Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Vance said a second Trump administration would first target illegal immigrants who have criminal histories.
“We’ve got 20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country. What do we do with them? I think the first thing that we do is we start with the criminal migrants. About a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally,” said Vance during the CBS News debate Tuesday evening. “I think you start with deportations on those folks.”
Vance said then the Trump administration would focus on making it more difficult for illegal immigrants to work in the United States, which would prompt an unspecified number of people to self-deport.
“You make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers. A lot of people will go home if they can’t work for less than minimum wage in our own country,” said Vance. “That’ll be really good for our workers who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day’s work.”
Walz chided Vance and noted that the Republican had previously said Trump’s deportation plan was “so unworkable” that it was “laughable.”
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), who represents 800 miles of the 2,000-mile southern border, said in a September interview with Newsweek that the federal government lacked the resources to carry out such a massive deportation.
The second of 20 points on the Trump-Vance campaign website states that the Republican ticket would “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.”
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No previous White House has attempted to carry out a mass deportation. Deportations by federal immigration officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement historically have fluctuated from 200,000 to 450,000 per year over the past decade.
ICE carries out arrests within the country and federal immigration judges determine whether an illegal immigrant ought to be removed from the country.