Republican vice president Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, spoke at a campaign event in Raleigh, NC, Wednesday. On the show, he continued to criticize migrants from Haiti, saying that those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or other legal immigration status are “illegal aliens” who should be deported.
Karl B DeBlaker/AP
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Karl B DeBlaker/AP
RALEIGH, NC – Republican vice president, Senator JD Vance said Wednesday that Haitian migrants with legal immigration status “illegal aliens” have been legally protected from deportation, suggesting that will change if Trump wins the election.
Immigration is a top issue for Republicans, and one of Trump’s campaign promises is to create the “largest deportations” in American history when he becomes president if he is elected.
Asked what the Trump administration will do about migrants who are already in the country legally after a speech in Raleigh on Wednesday, Vance suggested that the migrants were being given protection illegally and attacked Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, for the current administration’s use of it. mass parole and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people coming from certain countries.
“What’s the illegal basis for Kamala Harris to say we’re going to grant parole, not on a case-by-case basis, but for the millions of illegal aliens who come to this country,” Vance said. “It doesn’t make them legal because Kamala Harris picked up the amnesty stick. It makes their border policy a disgrace, and I’m still going to call them illegal aliens.”
The Biden administration recently extended protected legal status for undocumented migrants from Haiti living in the US until February 3, 2026, a designation that protects them from deportation but does not grant permanent legal status. While Vance spoke about Haiti specifically, citizens of more than ten other countries including Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan can also be awarded TPS.
The community of Springfield, Ohio, a medium-sized city between Dayton and Columbus, has been roiled by bomb threats, evacuations and harassment against its citizens after Vance, Trump and other Republicans spread the lie that Haitian immigrants there steal pets and eat them, among others. another false claim
At The Wall Street Journal It was reported Wednesday that Vance’s staff reached out to the Springfield city manager to ask about the veracity of the provocative claims, learned that the claims were false and showed them.
“He asked point-blank, ‘Is the rumor true about pets being taken and eaten?'” City Manager Bryan Heck told the outlet. “I said no. There is no evidence or verifiable reports to show this is true. I say that the claim is baseless.
The harassment and attention reached a fever pitch after Trump mentioned Springfield on the stage of a presidential debate last week, part of a Republican push to highlight the unpopularity of the Biden administration over its handling of illegal immigration and border security issues.
In North Carolina, Vance continued to play the role of the attack dog of the Trump campaign, saying that the “deceptive” attitude of the Biden-Harris administration on immigration is that, “we are going to let millions of illegal aliens to make your housing costs higher, so that your hospitals overflowing, so that the local schools cannot be studied by your children.
“Who agrees?” asked Vance. “Who in this room, who in this country agreed to allow millions of aliens to come into this country unchecked, unvetted? Nobody did.”
Vance also dismissed questions about how the administration would address the economic fallout from mass deportations that would affect industries such as agriculture and construction that depend on migrant labor.
“Well, first of all, if you talk to farmers, farmers are as upset about open borders as almost everyone else,” he said. “So I think farmers, and of course I reject the idea that the only way to have a productive agricultural economy is to allow 25 million legal aliens into this country, that’s not enough sense.”
