WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump, who has made anti-immigrant rhetoric a central part of his re-election campaign, warned Wednesday that if re-elected he would deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the country under two key Biden administration programs.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump railed against two Biden administration immigration programs designed to prevent migrants from coming directly to the southern border to seek asylum and to reduce chaos in the region.
Trump said he would force the more than one million people who had entered the United States under the two programs to leave: “Get ready to leave, because you’re going to get out very quickly.”
Trump has already promised a massive crackdown on immigration if he is re-elected and has said he will carry out mass deportations of migrants. He made similar promises in previous election campaigns, but during his time in office deportations never exceeded 350,000.
Under a Biden administration program, migrants as far as Mexico’s border with Guatemala can operate a smartphone app called CBP One to schedule an appointment to seek asylum at an official U.S. border crossing. Since its launch in January 2023, 813,000 migrants have used the system so far.
Separately, the administration launched a program last year that allows 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the United States if they have a financial sponsor, pass a background check and buy a plane ticket to fly to an American airport rather than traveling across the southern border. About 530,000 people have come to the United States under that program.
Migrants using both programs are allowed into the country under humanitarian parole for two years. The Biden administration has touted both measures as a way to reduce chaos at the border with Mexico, dismantle rogue smuggling networks and allow for more thorough screening of migrants before they enter the country.
But Republicans say both programs essentially amount to circumventing the country’s immigration laws set by Congress, and that the Biden administration is allowing people to enter who would otherwise not be qualified to enter the United States.
Republican-led states have filed lawsuits to stop both measures.
After earlier promises to carry out mass deportations of migrants, Trump and his chief immigration architect Stephen Miller are now getting more specific about how they plan to implement them in their second term in the White House, including invoking war powers, relying on like-minded governors and deploying the military.
However, any effort to deport migrants on such a gigantic scale would almost certainly face legal, logistical and financial challenges.
Immigration groups say Trump’s promises of mass deportations are stoking fear in the migrant community.
Esther Sung is legal director of the Justice Action Center. When Republican-led states sued to end the sponsorship program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, the organization represented Americans who were assisting migrants in entering the United States and wanted to keep the program.
A federal judge in Texas allowed the program to continue because the states had not proven that they had suffered financial harm as a result.
In an emailed statement Wednesday, Sung said that administrations of both parties have used the right to humanitarian parole for more than 70 years and that no administration has ever attempted to strip migrants of their parole to the extent proposed by Trump.
She said the operate of humanitarian parole would enable families to be reunited, enable others to escape persecution and address a critical labour shortage.
“As has been shown time and time again, immigrants strengthen the communities they enter and our economies,” she said. “This is not only fear-mongering, it is extreme, unprecedented and just plain cruel.”
