Governor and Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has stepped up his messaging on the open borders crisis, vowing to deport every migrant let in under the Biden administration. Over the weekend, DeSantis vowed that if elected to the White House next year, he would make deportations a “first priority” and estimated sending back six or seven million illegal immigrants.
“Everyone that has come illegally under Biden. We got to go — they’re sending back,” DeSantis said. “That’s going to be the first priority. That’s probably 6 or 7 million people right there. It’s going to require a lot of effort. It’s going to require us to lean in.”
In an interview with the New York Post on Monday, the DeSantis campaign said it would achieve its goal by expanding Border Patrol and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A complete plan is laid out on a page on the campaign’s website titled “Stop the Invasion.”
“We will hire more Border Patrol agents and more removal agents to make sure that even if illegal immigrants cross, they will swiftly be found and deported. We will allow ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers to do their jobs and focus on illegal alien entries under Biden’s border crisis and those with criminal records,”
The border crisis has long been a top priority for Republicans but has recently received bipartisan attention. With Florida and Texas regularly bussing migrants north, blue states are forced to reckon with their “sanctuary” status and support for open borders. Governors Kathy Hochul of New York and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois have stepped up as critics of the Biden administration and have called on the White House to deal with the crisis over the past week.
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Mexican cartels flood our border with poison, while illegal immigration has hollowed out the wages of American workers.
No more excuses. It's time to get the job done.@RonDeSantis will secure our border, destroy the cartels, and stop the invasion 👇 https://t.co/awWKajWtjM
— Never Back Down (@NvrBackDown24) October 1, 2023
However, DeSantis’s new offensive on the border has put him at odds with GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. In a Monday statement to the New York Post, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung accused DeSantis of copying the former President.
“Surprise, surprise,” Cheung told the Post. “Ron DeSantis has copied President Trump’s Agenda 47 policy proposals. Nobody wants a fake moron like Ron when they can have the real thing like President Trump.”
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Admitting that the famous promise from 2016 to have "Mexico pay for the wall" was just an empty campaign slogan is bad enough.
What makes it worse is that there is actually a way to get Mexico to pay for the wall: impose fees on remittances sent to Mexico (and other countries)… https://t.co/uND1ig1AjZ
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) October 2, 2023
That same afternoon, DeSantis took a shot at Trump, calling his promises to build a wall along the southern border an “empty campaign slogan.”
At a campaign event on Sunday, Trump told his audience that there was no “legal” mechanism to get Mexico to pay for a wall.
“Admitting that the famous promise from 2016 to have ‘Mexico pay for the wall’ was just an empty campaign slogan is bad enough,” DeSantis posted to X on Monday.
“What makes it worse is that there is actually a way to get Mexico to pay for the wall: impose fees on remittances sent to Mexico (and other countries) by illegal aliens,” DeSantis said. “As President, I will get this done. No more bluster! Results are all that matter!”
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