Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) couldn’t give a straight answer when asked if Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy would increase family separation.
In an interview Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” the vice presidential nominee talked about the separation of the family instead of focusing on the supposed failures of the Biden-Harris administration.
As Moderator Kristen Welker noted how Trump’s approach could affect the more than 11 million US citizens living in households with mixed immigration status, Vance insisted his primary goal was to revert to the current administration’s policies, which the Interior Department says have seen the illegal border. the number of crossings drops to its lowest level in about five years.
“You have to stop so many people from coming here illegally, and that means undoing all that [Vice President] Kamala Harris practically did on the first day of administration,” he explained. “Before we fix the problem, we have to prevent the problem from getting worse.”
Asked again whether Trump’s mass deportation plan would lead to the separation of families, Vance fired back, accusing Democrats of harming children.
“Kamala Harris’ policies have resulted in thousands and thousands of immigrant children living with sex traffickers and drug cartels,” he told Welker, adding, “He needs to take responsibility for that. That’s what real leadership is.”
After Welker pointed out that the Biden-Harris administration has no express policy on separating multi-status families, Vance assured him that implementing Trump’s zero-tolerance strategy would be “the most humane thing for children and certainly for American citizens.”
When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, he reversed many of Trump’s tougher deportation mandates.
After the Family Reunification Task Force was established, it was discovered that more than 5,000 families were separated by order of the previous administration.
Still, a 2022 study by the National Immigrant Justice Center found that the Biden administration “routinely separates families” and had “no meaningful policies to protect family unity.”
