U.S. Rand Paul is breaking ranks with President-elect Donald Trump over his "illegal" plan to have American soldiers round up millions of migrants for deportation.
Paul said Sunday that although he supports Trump's intention to arrest tens of thousands of migrant "murderers," "rapists" and other criminals, the job should be carried out by law enforcement authorities.
"We've had a distrust of putting the Army into our streets, because the police have a difficult job but the police understand the Fourth Amendment," he told CBS' Face the Nation. "They have to go to judges. They have to get warrants. It has to be specific."
Last week, Trump confirmed a supporter's assertion that he was "prepared to declare a national emergency" and use the military to conduct a "mass deportation program."
"TRUE!!!" Trump wrote Nov. 18 on his social media website.
Paul said Sunday that he was "100% supportive of going after the 15,000 murderers, the 13,000 sexual assault perpetrators, rapists, all these people."
"Let's send them on their way to prison or back home to another prison. So, I would say: 'All-points bulletin; all in,'" he said. "But you don't do it with the Army because it's illegal."
Paul also said that Denver Mayor Mike Johnston would likely be removed from office and potentially prosecuted if he made good on a threat to have local cops prevent federal authorities from entering the city.
Paul said that "there's a longstanding history of the supremacy of federal law" and that if Johnston, a Democrat, opposed the federal government, "it will go all the way to the Supreme Court."
"And I would suspect that he would be removed from office," he said. "I don't know whether or not there'd be a criminal prosecution for someone resisting federal law, but he will lose."
In an interview published Wednesday, Johnston raised the specter of deploying the Denver Police Department to resist mass deportation efforts.
"More than us having DPD stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there," Johnston told the Denverite website.
The mayor walked back those remarks on Friday, telling local TV station KUSA that he regretted having "used that image."
"That's the image I hope we can avoid. What I was trying to say is this is an outcome I hope we can avoid in this country. I think none of us want that," he said.
During this year's presidential campaign, Trump accused rival candidate Vice President Kamala Harris of having "allowed 21 million illegals to pour in from all over the world."
There is no evidence to support the claim, with the GOP-controlled House Homeland Security Committee saying late last month that Customs and Border Protection has recorded about 10.8 million migrant encounters since Oct. 1, 2021, following President Joe Biden's election.
More than 8.7 million of those encounters took place along the Mexican border, according to CBP statistics.
