Trump returns to the US-Mexico border as he lays out a set of hard-line immigration proposals

By Jill Colvin, Paul J. Weber and Michelle L. Value | Related Press

EDINBURG, Texas  — Donald Trump returned to the U.S.-Mexico border for a go to Sunday as he promotes a hard-line immigration agenda that will be way more expansive than the insurance policies he pursued throughout his first time period as president.

Earlier than making remarks in Edinburg, Texas, Trump served meals to Texas Nationwide Guard troopers, troopers and others who might be stationed on the border over Thanksgiving. He was joined by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a longtime ally and fellow border hawk who is predicted to endorse the front-runner for the 2024 nomination in the course of the go to, in response to an individual near Trump who spoke on situation of anonymity earlier than a proper announcement.

Trump and Abbott handed out tacos, and the previous president shook fingers and posed for footage. They deliberate to talk to about 150 supporters outdoors an airport hangar within the city, which is roughly 30 miles from the border.

Trump has been laying out immigration proposals that will mark a dramatic escalation of the strategy he utilized in workplace and that drew alarms from civil rights activists and quite a few courtroom challenges.

“On my first day again within the White Home, I’ll terminate each open-borders coverage of the Biden administration. I’ll cease the invasion on our southern border and start the most important home deportation operation in American historical past,” he mentioned in Iowa Saturday.

He additionally desires to:

• revive and broaden his controversial journey ban, which initially focused seven Muslim-majority nations. Trump’s preliminary govt order was fought all the best way to the U.S. Supreme Court docket, which upheld what Trump complained was a “watered down” model that included vacationers from North Korea and a few Venezuelan officers.

• start new “ideological screening” for all immigrants, aiming to bar “Christian-hating communists and Marxists” and “harmful lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs” from coming into america. “Those that come to and be part of our nation should love our nation,” he has mentioned.

• bar those that assist Hamas. “For those who empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified,” Trump says. “If you wish to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified. For those who assist Hamas or any ideology that’s having to do with that or any of the opposite actually sick ideas that undergo individuals’s minds — very harmful ideas — you’re disqualified.”

• deport immigrants residing within the nation who harbor “jihadist sympathies” and ship immigration brokers to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” to determine violators. He would goal international nationals on faculty campuses and revoke the coed visas of those that categorical anti-American or antisemitic views.

• invoke the Alien Enemies Act to take away from america all recognized or suspected gang members and drug sellers. That regulation was used to justify internment camps in World Struggle II. It permits the president to unilaterally detain and deport people who find themselves not U.S. residents.

• finish the constitutional proper to birthright citizenship by signing an govt order his first day in workplace that will codify a legally untested reinterpretation of the 14th Modification. Beneath his order, solely kids with at the least one U.S. citizen or lawful everlasting resident mum or dad could be eligible for a passport, Social Safety quantity and different advantages.

• terminate all work permits and reduce off funding for shelter and transportation for people who find themselves within the nation illegally.

• construct extra of the wall alongside the border, crack down on authorized asylum-seekers and reimplement measures comparable to Title 42, which allowed Trump to show away immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border on the grounds of stopping the unfold of COVID-19.

• press Congress to go a regulation so anybody caught trafficking ladies or kids would obtain the dying penalty.

• shift federal regulation enforcement brokers, together with FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration personnel, to immigration enforcement, and reposition on the southern border hundreds of troops at the moment stationed abroad. “Earlier than we defend the borders of international nations we should safe the border of our nation,” he mentioned.

Trump has made frequent journeys to the border as a candidate and president. Throughout his 2016 marketing campaign, he traveled to Laredo, Texas in July 2015 for a go to that highlighted how his views on immigration helped him win media consideration and assist from the GOP base.

The border has additionally develop into a centerpiece of Abbott’s agenda and the topic of an escalating struggle with the Biden administration over immigration. The three-term governor has permitted billions of {dollars} in new border wall building, licensed razor wire on the banks of the Rio Grande and bused hundreds of migrants to Democrat-led cities throughout america.

Abbott is predicted to quickly signal what could be one in every of Texas’ most aggressive measures to this point: a regulation that permits cops to arrest migrants suspected of coming into the nation illegally and empowers judges to successfully deport them. The measure dramatically challenges the U.S. authorities’s authority over immigration. It already has drawn a rebuke from Mexico.

Nonetheless, the Texas GOP’s laborious proper has not at all times embraced Abbott. Trump posted on his social media platform earlier this 12 months that the governor was “MISSING IN ACTION!” after Republicans voted to question Texas Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton, a Trump ally. Abbott was additionally booed at a 2022 Trump rally.

However Abbott’s navigation inside the GOP has constructed him broad assist in Texas, the place he has outperformed extra strident Republicans down-ballot and helped the GOP make essential inroads with Hispanic voters.Democrats tried to make use of the journey to painting Trump’s plans as excessive.