Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance repeatedly refused to confirm whether families would be separated at the southern border should he and Donald Trump win the elections and carry out a broad immigration crackdown.
The Ohio Senator was asked about the possibility by NBC News after Trump did not rule it out during a campaign stop in Arizona last week. "You have to stop so many people from coming here illegally in the first place, and that means undoing everything that [Vice President] Kamala Harris did practically on day one of the administration," Vance said.
"Before we even fix the problem, we've got to stop the problem from getting worse," he added. Asked if that meant separating families at the border, he said: "I think that families are currently being separated (...) you're certainly going to have to deport some people in the country."
The outlet clarified that when the Biden-Harris administration took office, they rescinded the policy that allowed for family separations and established a reunification task force, which found that more than 5,000 families were affected by it.
Vance's comments were similar to Trump's who said on Friday in Arizona that even though "provisions will be made," "we have to get the criminals out." "It will cost trillions of dollars to keep these people, and I'm talking about in particular starting with the criminals," Trump said. "That is costing us a lot more than deporting. But we have no choice, regardless, we have no choice. We're going to have to deport," he added
When asked how he would pay to carry out his plan, Trump provided no details of a plan, which could cost billions of dollars to implement.
According to data from the immigration advocacy group FWD.us, 22 million people in the United States live in a mixed-status household, where at least one undocumented person lives with U.S. citizens, green card holders or other lawful residents.
During his speech, Trump reiterated that he would work with local law enforcement to apprehend migrants who entered the country illegally as part of his plan to implement the largest mass deportation in U.S. history.
Vance, on his end, said that the first measures should focus on deporting "a lot of violent criminals" and making it "harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers."
"I think it's interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let's start with 1 million. That's where Kamala Harris failed. And then we can go from there," he said.
He has also said that illegal immigration "starts to create ethnic conflict", which then "creates higher crime rates."
Vance then went on to cite the movie "Gangs of New York", a fictional film, to support his claims: "Has anybody ever seen the movie 'Gangs of New York'? That's what I'm talking about. We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates."
