Trump on Springfield Haitian migrants: ‘They have to be removed’

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HOUSTON (NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump exclusively told NewsNation in an interview Wednesday he would revoke the temporary protected status for Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio, and ensure their return to Haiti.

The Republican nominee was at a private fundraiser in Texas when he addressed the situation in Springfield, telling NewsNation border reporter Ali Bradley that 32,000 Haitian migrants had been relocated to a community of 52,000 residents.

Trump told NewsNation he believes Haiti would accept the migrants back under his leadership.

“It has nothing to do with Haiti or anything else. You have to remove the people, and you have to bring them back to their own country,” he said.

“Springfield is such a beautiful place. Have you seen what’s happened to it? It’s been overrun. You can’t do that to people. I’d revoke (the protected status), and I’d bring (the migrants) back to their country.”

The comments come after Trump’s running mate, Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance, revisited false claims he made about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating pets, saying now he is “concerned for the American citizens” in the city. 

“In Springfield, and communities across this country, you have schools that are overwhelmed, housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said while debating Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, his Democratic opponent, in the election’s only vice presidential debate.

Former President Donald Trump spoke with Ali Bradley, who leads NewsNation’s daily coverage of the border. Follow Ali on X and click here to download the NewsNation app to see exclusive reporting from the border every day.

Enabling and protecting border law enforcement

The former president told NewsNation he would enable local law enforcement to execute what he calls the largest deportation in American history and potentially deploy military forces to combat drug cartels.

Trump said border agents “know everything about [migrants] … they know the good ones, the bad ones, and they’re going to get them out.”

Addressing cartel violence along the southern border, Trump proposed a “military operation” to counter increasingly sophisticated tactics by Mexican drug organizations, which reportedly now employ drone jammers and have been found with rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices near the border.

“They’re very rich, and they’re very evil,” Trump said of the cartels. “We’re going to have to get in some military action. … They’re killing 300,000 people a year.”

Two Mexican drug cartels have helped flood the United States with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 80 times stronger than morphine that’s killing over 200 Americans daily, authorities say.

The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have established a sophisticated supply chain, sourcing precursor chemicals from China and manufacturing fentanyl in clandestine Mexican labs before smuggling it across the U.S. border, according to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports.

Mexican drug cartels operating along the U.S.-Mexico border are using electronic devices to disrupt drones being used by U.S. border officials to track immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally, NewsNation learned. 

In September 2023, Border Patrol agents in Texas discovered a backpack with what appeared to be cannonball-sized IEDs. It wasn’t the first time the U.S. government had found potential explosive devices at the border. 

In May 2023, NewsNation reported border officials recovered a rudimentary device created using an M&M container that was bound with electrical tape. 

The former president also praised GOP Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s border initiatives but maintained that border security ultimately requires federal action, stating, “All you have to do if you’re the president is say to the Border Patrol and to the states, ‘Nobody come in, it’s closed.'”

Trump predicted he would win New Mexico because of the southern border. Trump lost the state in 2020 by about 11 points and in 2016 by about 8 points.

How many people are crossing the border? 

U.S. Border Patrol arrests along the Southwest border rose slightly from July to August but remained among the Biden administration’s lowest monthly numbers. 

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, agents had 58,038 encounters between ports of entry in August, up from 56,399 in July. 

The actual number of encounters at America’s borders is expected to reach about 10 million by the end of the fiscal year, including repeat crossings and deportations. 

These encounters include repeat crossings and deportations, which means the actual number of unique individuals entering the country is much lower. 

‘The largest deportation effort in American history’   

One of Trump’s key promises if reelected is to mount the largest domestic deportation in U.S. history. He made similar promises when he first ran for office, but during his administration, deportations never topped 350,000. 

For comparison, then-President Barack Obama carried out 432,000 deportations in 2013, the highest annual total since records were kept. 

This time, Trump has given some more specifics on his promises. He said he’ll use the National Guard to round up migrants. And he said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country that the U.S. is at war with. 

He’s also vowed to kick out hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have entered the country under two key Biden administration programs if he’s reelected. 

Any mass deportation plans would certainly be challenged in court and be enormously expensive to carry out. And it would depend on countries’ willingness to take back their citizens. 

Trump also said he would bring back policies he had put in place during his first term, like the Remain in Mexico program and Title 42. Remain in Mexico made migrants wait in Mexico while their asylum cases were heard, while Title 42 curbed immigration on public health grounds. 

He has said he’ll revive and expand a travel ban from his term that originally targeted citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries and pledged new “ideological screening” for immigrants to bar “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs.” 

Trump also seeks to end birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S. whose parents are both in the country illegally. 

Why is the border a top voter issue? 

Making the border safer and other immigration-related issues remain among the biggest concerns for voters heading into the 2024 election. Trump has used the border as a backdrop for a series of campaign stops in recent months. 

Trump has repeatedly criticized President Joe Biden and Harris, claiming that the president and his “border czar” are to blame for the steady amounts of migrants and for the trouble that Trump has alleged has come specifically from the illegal border crossings. 

The president has countered with the effectiveness of his executive order, which led to a drop in the number of border encounters after a record 250,000 encounters were reported in December 2023 alone. 

There has been a significant drop in encounters between federal agents assigned to the U.S.-Mexico border and immigrants who have entered the country illegally. 

Political gridlock on border policy 

In June 2024, Biden released a series of executive actions capping migrant crossing until border encounters remain consistently low — under 2,500 per day for an entire week — to give Border Patrol more time to handle each migrant’s situation. 

The president also clarified his use of executive powers, saying he was doing what Congress would not about a bipartisan immigration deal that failed in the Senate after Trump urged GOP lawmakers to vote against it. 

NewsNation’s Jeff Arnold and The Associated Press contributed to this report.