President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed his plan to initiate mass deportations once back in office, top aides have said.
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national campaign press secretary, stated that President-elect Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory serves as a clear endorsement of the policies he championed throughout his campaign.
“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 said, according to Newsweek.
“Which include, on Day One, launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country. It includes drill, baby drill, and expediting permits for nuclear, for fossil fuels, for an above-all energy approach that’s going to bring down the cost of living in this country,” she said.
“It includes, on Day One, bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table to end this war and returning to the very tough sanctions on the Iranian regime, so we can stop the chaos in the Middle East,” she said.
Trump adviser Jason Miller, meanwhile, said Trump’s first day back in office will usher in a return to the policies in effect when he left office, “such as put all of his strong border policies back in place.”
“The previous administration didn’t need any acts of Congress to go and break the border, and so all we have to do with regard to the border is put his policies back in place,” he said. “We can secure it and start making the country much more safe.”
Advisers have also said that Trump wants new laws from a potentially GOP-controlled Congress as well to keep the border strong so that a future president cannot simply reverse his policies again.
“Also we can get a lot of the energy exploration going, which, of course that will help with bringing down the cost of things and stop the out-of-control inflation that we’ve seen,” Miller added.
Trump stated that securing the border and removing criminal illegal immigrants are among his top priorities for America.
“We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, and we have to — at the same time, we want people to come into our country,” he said in a Thursday interview, according to NBC.
“And you know, I’m not somebody that says, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in,” he stated further, echoing most other Republicans who have said that legal immigration is the way to come to America.
Trump also said he’ll spend whatever it takes to carry out his deportation policy.
“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag,” he said.
Trump said voters “want to have borders, and they like people coming in, but they have to come in with love for the country. They have to come in legally.”
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The president-elect is correct. Polling throughout the Biden-Harris administration has shown that a majority of Democrats and Republicans want the country’s borders secured and respected.
Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who on Monday was named the new administration’s “border czar,” previewed what deportations would look like during an interview on CNN last month.
“It’s not gonna be — a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous,” Homan said.
“They’ll be targeted arrests. We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find ‘em based on numerous, you know, investigative processes,” he said.
