Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has vowed to end birthright citizenship, finish building the wall on the southern border and send US forces into Mexico to fight drug cartels as part of a proposed aggressive immigration policy and relative who filed Monday in a Texas border town.
The sweeping immigration plan, the Florida governor’s first detailed policy statement as a 2024 candidate, represents a long wish list of Republican immigration proposals that largely mirrors the policies of former President Donald Trump.
Much of DeSantis’s plan faces great difficulties, requiring the overturning of legal precedents, the approval of other countries, or even an amendment to the US Constitution.
Still, DeSantis projected confidence Monday, slapping leaders of both political parties as he detailed his plan in front of a small crowd in Eagle Pass, Texas, a community that has become a major corridor for illegal border crossings during the presidency. by Joe Biden.
“I’ve listened to people in DC for years and years and years, for decades now, Republicans and Democrats, always grating on this but never quite getting to the point,” DeSantis told an audience of about 100 people. I am saying that there are no excuses in this.
The DeSantis campaign has promised to release more detailed policy implementations in the coming weeks.
But by leading on immigration, DeSantis is prioritizing a divisive issue that has long been the focus of the most conservative GOP voters. At the same time, voters on the center and on the left have taken notice of the increase in illegal border crossings in recent years.
Overall, 6 in 10 US adults disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of immigration, according to a recent AP-NORC poll. Still, it may be hard for DeSantis to separate himself on immigration from the many other Republicans seeking the 2024 presidential nomination, especially Trump, who is the frontrunner.
The former president apparently saw the appearance of his Republican rival on television. He described DeSantis’s comments as “very boring.”
“DeSanctus’s speech was just a repeat of all the things I did to have the ‘strongest, most secure border in American history,’” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump emphasized immigration as he delivered the keynote address to hundreds of enthusiastic religious conservatives at the Faith and Liberty Coalition conference in Washington over the weekend.
He has vowed to carry out “the largest national deportation operation on the border” and boasted of having completed more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) of wall along the southern border during his administration, while vowing to build even more if he wins. another mandate.
The former president also vowed to reinstate coronavirus pandemic-era rules known as Title 42 that allowed US authorities to quickly turn away immigrants at the border, denouncing without proof “all the diseases that illegal aliens bring.”
DeSantis did not mention Trump by name when laying out his new policies, but his repeated references to the unfinished border wall were nonetheless a blow to the former president. Trump tried and ultimately failed to finish a border wall along the entire 1,950-mile (3,140-kilometer) US-Mexico border during his four years in office.
Prior to Monday’s announcement, the DeSantis campaign launched new merchandise with the words “Build the wall. There are no excuses.”
Trump’s policies worked to restrict immigration, but the number of people crossing the US-Mexico border continued to rise during his time in office before falling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
And his policies caused blockages in the system that led to mass overcrowding; the backlog of immigration court cases alone grew from approximately 500,000 in June 2016 to 1.3 million cases by the end of 2020. There were also massive human rights concerns, particularly with the Remain in Mexico program and the separation of children of their families at the border.
DeSantis embraces many of Trump’s policies.
DeSantis vows to end the so-called catch and release policy of the United States, which currently allows the release of illegal immigrants into the country until their hearing dates. That’s because federal immigration authorities have the money for only 30,000 beds, making it impossible to detain all those arrested.
DeSantis also wants to reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy to make asylum seekers wait in Mexico for US immigration court hearings. That plan would need Mexico’s approval.
He is calling for the “Flores loophole” to be closed, which, among other things, requires families to be released from custody within 20 days. It’s part of a federal court order, so it’s unclear how he could shut it down if he’s elected.
DeSantis also vows to use military force against drug cartels if necessary.
It would also “reserve the right to operate across the border to protect our territory from the activities of Mexican cartels,” according to the plan, which also calls for the US Navy and Coast Guard to block precursor chemicals from entering Mexico. Mexican ports if “the Mexican government will not stop the drug manufacturing of the cartels.”
“We will use all the power at our disposal against Mexico and all the power at our disposal against the cartels,” he told his audience at Eagle Pass. “If they’re trying to move product into this country and they’re killing our people, you not only have the right, you have the responsibility to strike back.”
DeSantis’ plan says little about the millions of immigrants already living in the country illegally, apart from promising to deport those who have overstayed their visas. Deporting those people has been a challenge that has eluded authorities for decades.
The Florida governor spoke publicly about key elements of his plan for the first time in Eagle Pass, an area where surrounding farms and sparsely populated cities outnumbered Texas’ Rio Grande Valley in arrests for part of last year.
Groups of dozens, sometimes hundreds of people, forded the shallows of the river to surrender to Border Patrol agents in the sprawling city of warehouses and dilapidated homes.
Mission: Border Hope, an immigrant aid group, moved into a department store last year to help organize the bus ride to San Antonio for up to 1,000 people a day who were released with orders to appear in immigration court or an immigration office.
In September, the small border town made international headlines when nine people drowned trying to swim across the Rio Grande.
While the area leans Democratic, some in the audience on Monday spoke of a new conservative push. A teacher in the audience noted that local schools are being forced to close their doors as law enforcement goes after immigrants trying to evade detection. Several mothers in the crowd also said they had lost children to fentanyl overdoses.
DeSantis supported an audience member who suggested that the “invasion” at the border constituted an “act of war.”
“I think the state of Texas has the right to declare an invasion,” DeSantis told the man. “You will see as president under Article 2 of the Constitution, you have the responsibility and the duty to protect the country. We’re going to do that and we’re going to do it hard.”
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The Republican Party candidate for the 2024 presidential election, Ron DeSantis, promises an “aggressive” transformation of the immigration and border protection system in the south of the country. Among his many policies, he highlights ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
