MILWAUKEE—If elected to a second term as president, Donald Trump vows, he will deport the illegal aliens who entered the country during the four years of the Biden administration.
How? “One at a time,” Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration, said Monday at a press conference at the Republican National Convention.
Although “people are taken aback by that,” Morgan said, “that’s got to be our attitude.”
“What, is our attitude going to be, ‘Well, because there are so many, we’re not going to enforce the law?’ Our nation was built upon the rule of law and a foundation of laws,” he said.
Even if the southern border is secured, Morgan said, “we have to send the message to 180 different countries, to millions of illegal aliens, that [you won’t be allowed to stay] if somehow you make your way to this border illegally.”
During a May campaign rally in New Jersey, Trump pledged to “send [President] Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home where they belong.”
Without deporting illegal aliens, “we’re never going to be able to successfully address this issue,” said Morgan, who oversaw CBP from July 2019 to January 2021, when Trump left office.
A second Trump term likely would mean a return to the border and immigration policies that Morgan and Tom Homan, Trump’s acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, implemented for him within the Department of Homeland Security.
“There has to be a consequence to breaking our laws,” Homan said at the press conference during The Heritage Foundation’s Policy Fest event.
Morgan and Homan both are now visiting fellows in Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
If there are no consequences for crossing the border illegally, “you’re never going to fix the problem,” Homan said.
Trump’s border policies, he said, were effective during his four years as president and can be just as effective during a second Trump administration.
“Remain in Mexico [policy]—game changer,” Homan said of Trump’s implemented policies. “Safe third country—game changer, [border] wall—game changer, ending ‘catch and release’—game changer,” Homan said.
Homan and Morgan were clear that they are pro-immigration, but it must be legal immigration.
“Come to our borders,” Morgan said of legitimate asylum-seekers. “Show identification.”
If you are a migrant who is truly fleeing persecution in your homeland and have a legitimate asylum claim, Morgan explained, then you should be OK with waiting at a “detention facility that has high standards while you go through your asylum process to ultimately then get one of the greatest rewards you can have—and that’s to be a citizen of the United States.”
Since Biden became president in January 2021, CBP has encountered nearly 10 million illegal aliens at or between ports of entry on America’s borders. Over 1.8 million known “gotaways” also have crossed the borders into the country.
