Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance said Sunday that grappling with the problem of illegal immigration has to first begin by stemming the flow of illegal crossings, which means “undoing everything Kamala Harris” has done since day one of the Biden-Harris administration.
Sen. Vance, R-Ohio, made the comments in an interview on the NBC News morning program “Meet The Press.”
“If you want to get control of the illegal immigration problem, you need to stop the bleeding,” Vance told host Kristen Welker.
Vance slammed the border policies of Vice President Harris, named border czar in March 2021, that has added about 12 million in 3 1/2 years to the rolls of illegal immigrants in the country who “should have been deported but weren’t.”
“You have to stop so many people from coming here illegally in the first place, and that means undoing everything that Kamala Harris did practically on day one of the administration,” Vance said. “You have to reimpose deportations; you have to stop catch-and-release; stop granting asylum to every person who comes in here … and stop granting mass parole.
“Before we even fix the problem, we’ve got to stop the problem from getting worse.”
Vance also rejected Welker’s premise that illegal crossings are currently lower under Harris.
“Border crossings at the southern border are lower because the Harris administration is sending more immigrants through the ports of entry,” Vance said. “The number of illegal crossings are not any lower, they’re just shuffling how the people are coming into the border in the first place.”
Welker asserted that the border is operating more efficiently under Harris.
“I don’t want a border czar who makes it more efficient for illegal immigrants to come into this country,” Vance fired back.
Vance also addressed Harris’ assertions during her convention speech last week that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s immigration policy would separate migrant families. Vance said it’s already happening under Harris and that the best way to keep families together is to turn them around, together, at the border before they enter illegally.
“I think that families are currently being separated,” Vance said.
The internal watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning last week that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency lost track of tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children under Biden-Harris.
“Kamala Harris’ policies have led to thousands upon thousands migrant children living with sex traffickers and drug cartels,” Vance said. “That is the consequence of her policies.”