Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., a prominent ally of Donald Trump, downplayed the prospect of the military having a major role in what the president-elect has envisioned as a massive deportation effort when he takes office.
Speaking with “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, Donalds said local and federal law enforcement such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take the lead on deportations, which he said will focus on immigrants convicted of crimes and those who has already been given. legal deportation orders but remain in the country.
“When you talk about military assets being used, it’s only as an extreme last resort. There are more than 6,000 officers who have dedicated their lives to having to remove illegal aliens from our country, people who already have a legal deportation order, but it has not been carried out by Joe Biden,” Donalds said.
“I think if you’re going to use military assets, it’s a last resort, but it’s only for logistical purposes, Martha. So I think what we have to be very careful about is not to try to throw it out. The idea that you want troops in the United States going door to door, that’s not going to happen.”
Rep. Byron Donalds appears on “This Week”, December 8, 2024.
ABC News
Trump made immigration a cornerstone of his campaign, panning President Joe Biden for the record number of unauthorized border crossings that occurred in the earlier years of his tenure.
The president-elect has promised to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally, but also to scrap certain programs that offer legal status, including Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and other groups of immigrants.
Trump deported about 1.5 million immigrants during his first term, according to an analysis by the Migrant Policy Institute, but Donalds predicted that number will top out in Trump’s second term.
“Just speaking to you anecdotally, it’s going to be 2 million at a minimum, but it’s going to be more because the amount of people who already have a deportation order, people who are in our country who have committed crimes, people, who have already been convicted of murder, they should go and go immediately,” Donalds told Raddatz.
Donalds also predicted that stricter border enforcement and increased deportation efforts will prompt some undocumented immigrants to leave the country on their own rather than be kicked out by law enforcement, which bans them from re-entering the country for 10 years.
“When you have an active deportation process, we know there are aliens who will want to go back to their home country. They don’t want to get caught up in the process of dealing with ICE because if you get deported through that process , then you will effectively be barred from returning to the United States for a period of 10 years,” Donalds said.
“When you turn off the spigots on opening our borders, when you turn off the spigots on all this aid that goes to illegal aliens in the United States, and then you have a president of the United States and a government that is serious about repatriating people back to their homeland, you will see that the lure of coming to America is not going to be what it was under Joe Biden,” Donalds added.
