Republican Florida Rep. Michael Waltz, who was selected to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s national security advisor, laid out the administration’s “more aggressive” plan to combat illegal immigration Sunday on CNN, saying it will be “ready to go minute one.”
Throughout his campaign, Trump vowed to secure the U.S. southern border and implement one of the largest mass deportation plans as border encounters reached record highs under the Biden-Harris administration. On “State of the Union,” host Dana Bash asked Waltz how Trump’s initial plan would look, as reports indicated the incoming president has a set of executive orders “specifically for immigration.”
“Well, you are certainly going to see a much more aggressive action from Border Patrol to lock down our border, number one. Number two, we are working rapidly back towards a ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. Number three, you’re going to see some of our key partners step up in terms of deportation and taking some of these people back,” Waltz said.
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“I don’t want to get too far ahead of who they are, how that’s going to occur. Then number four, Tom Holman absolutely is going to take much more aggressive ICE action. Our inner city mayors are begging for it,” Waltz added. “The president campaigned on it. We are going to start with the worst of the worst of the criminals to get them out of our cities and out of our communities.”
Since appointing him as border czar in November, former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan has remained firm in pushing Trump’s mass deportation plan forward. While Democratic officials have threatened to withhold aid from ICE and Trump’s border czar, Homan said in December that his operational plan would begin in Chicago.
Bash then asked Waltz if the plan would include “large-scale raids,” to which the incoming national security advisor questioned how she would “define large scale.”
“Well, I don’t know how you would define large scale, but when we have criminals raping, assaulting and conducting the mayhem that they are, one of the things you’re absolutely going to see is aggressive action to get them out of our communities. The president is ready to go day — minute one — on getting these people out of the United States,” Waltz concluded.
Recent reports predict that Trump is preparing executive orders to immediately begin mass deportation efforts in key sanctuary cities across the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal. The operation in Chicago is reportedly set to begin Tuesday morning and will take the entire week, with an estimated 100 to 200 ICE agents deployed to the city.
A recent poll conducted by The New York Times and Ipsos found that 83% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning participants agreed with deporting illegal immigrants who have a criminal record, with 94% of Republicans and 64% of Independents also in agreement.
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