WASHINGTON: 2024 US Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, during a CNN GOP presidential debate ahead of Iowa caucuses on Wednesday, vowed to fight illegal migration into the United States if elected the next president, reported Sputnik.
“We need to put 25,000 border patrol and ICE (the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents on the ground and let them do their job. We need to de-fund sanctuary cities once and for all. No more safe havens for illegal immigrants. We need to make sure we go back to the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy so that no one even steps foot on US soil. And instead of ‘catch and release,‘ we need to go to ‘catch and deport.’ That’s the only way we’ll stop the incentives of this illegal immigrants coming across,“ Haley told the debate.
DeSantis, for his part, told the debate that “you need a wall” to stop illegal migration into the US as it is “a physical fact of life” if it is there, adding that “you can’t trust politicians to do this.”
DeSantis also said, when asked whether his administration would allow millions of undocumented migrants to stay in the country, that the “number of people that will be amnestied when I’m president is zero,“ adding that “we cannot do an amnesty in this country.”
“First of all, that’s gonna do is cause more people to wanna come illegally. So you gotta enforce the law, it’s gotta be consistent, people gotta know it’s there. You also have to remove benefits for people who are here illegally … We should not let states provide these benefits … It creates a magnet for people coming in. So, federally, no benefits, no enticements to come in,“ DeSantis said, adding that his administration would “crack down on sanctuary states and sanctuary cities.”
Haley, when asked the same question, said “you have to deport them, and the reason you have to deport them is they’re cutting the line.”
Both presidential candidates also criticised former US President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden for failing to address the migration issue, with DeSantis saying that Biden has “let” 8 million migrants into the country through the US-Mexico border.
Earlier this month, US media reported that border security officials documented 302,000 migrant encounters in December, marking the highest single-month figure ever recorded.–Bernama-Sputnik
