Vice President JD Vance called out hecklers who shouted at him for pointing out the negative consequences illegal immigration has on Americans’ livelihoods during his Monday speech at the National League of Cities.
The first heckler began shouting at the vice president as he pointed out a correlation between a mass influx in immigration and a rise in housing prices. In response, Vance stated that President Donald Trump’s administration is cracking down on illegal immigration in order to “make it more affordable for Americans to live.”
“I see one of our nice representatives out here actually wants to actually, I guess, continue to flood the country with illegal immigrants, making your communities and citizens unaffordable,” Vance said in response to the heckler. “But ma’am, with all respect, one of the reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing is we want to make [the country] more affordable for Americans to live. That is one of the reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
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Another heckler began shouting at the vice president moments later, with Vance continuing to defend his administration’s enforcement of the southern border.
“Maybe he’ll shout it in front of 2,000 people, I can’t even hear what you’re saying, sir,” Vance told the heckler. “But importantly on this question of immigration, we have to recognize that yes, you can disagree with some the laws that are in place, you can disagree with the enforcement of those laws, you can even vote for people who want to change those laws. But while we have immigration laws on the books, we will enforce them and we expect our local municipalities to help us.”
Vance, who visited the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday, said illegal immigration burdens local communities, including hospitals, resources and schools, and called on the nation to “acknowledge” the importance of border security.
“One of the things I heard [at the border], I was talking to the mayor in that community and he said it’s incredibly stressful on local resources, it’s incredibly stressful on local hospitals, it’s stressful on their local schools to have a massive increase. So look, I recognize there’s a diversity of opinions here, clearly there is. I also think it’s important to be honest about those disagreements, to acknowledge those disagreements, but to say the reason why we care about border security is because we want your communities to be safer, we want them to be more affordable, we want there to be less drugs in our country and we want your citizens to be able to live the American Dream.”
“It is the birthright of every single one of our citizens and we’re going to fight for it every single day,” Vance continued.
Border officials encountered a record high number of illegal migrant encounters during former President Joe Biden’s administration, which exceeded 2 million in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. The Trump administration almost immediately solved the border crisis since taking office on Jan. 20, with crossings and encounters having declined to record lows.
Trump announced there were only 8,326 apprehensions during his first full month in office, while Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said there were 200 migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border on Feb. 22, marking the lowest single-day apprehension number in over 15 years. Border czar Tom Homan said in a Feb. 17 statement that he cannot recall border crossings ever being that low since becoming a border agent in 1984.
The vice president then addressed blue collar workers, who have suffered the most from illegal immigration by facing wage and job cuts. Trump made historic inroads with this demographic in the 2024 election, partially helping him secure a victory against former Vice President Kamala Harris.
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