Kari Lake, former Arizona gubernatorial candidate and current nominee to lead Voice of America, applauded President Donald Trump's plan to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as a means to speed up deportations, telling Newsmax it's another example of "promises kept."
"You know what? They had way more common sense back then," Lake told "Rob Schmitt Tonight" on Thursday.
Trump reportedly will invoke the law as soon as Friday, a move designed to speed up the removal of certain illegal immigrants. The act allows the president to detain, relocate, or deport non-citizens from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime, and it has been upheld by the Supreme Court for use after wartime.
Lake said the framers of the law "knew that the risk of an invasion would be something too great for our country to bear. And unfortunately, we've had to bear it for the past four years" under the Biden administration.
Trump first signaled on the campaign trail in October that he would invoke the law, something he'll reportedly do by proclamation. He also pledged the same during his inaugural address.
"And President Trump, for four years, has said he's going to put the American people first. He's going to close the border and get people who came in and invaded our country out. And he's just keeping his promises," Lake told Schmitt. "And our streets will be safer, our economy will actually grow, the price of things will go down. And I'm thrilled that he's going to do this. He's using every tool in the toolbox."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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