JD Vance said America’s immigration challenges are like a sandwich that’s too big for your mouth, and he wants to deport undocumented migrants a “bite” at a time.
Vance claimed at a Pennsylvania event Thursday there are at least 20 million undocumented immigrants in the states and he wants to deport a “million” of the “most violent criminal” immigrants.
“I think of it as kind of like somebody asking me, well, that’s a really big sandwich. It’s 10 times the size of your mouth. How are you possibly going to eat the whole thing?” said Vance. “And it’s, well, you take the first bite, and then you take the second bite, and then you take the third bite.”
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The metaphor elicited some applause from the crowd at Vance’s event, held at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in the state. Vance also railed against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s service record, claimed former President Donald Trump embodies the Marines’ “always faithful” motto, and laid out his not-very-specific plan to curb undocumented immigration.
Vance claimed that a Trump re-election would bring border crossings to close to zero, though he didn’t say how the administration would achieve this—or why Trump didn’t eliminate crossings during his first presidential term.
Vance said it was critical to “stop the bleeding” at the southern border before addressing undocumented immigrants already living in the country.
He added, “Get them out of here. First prioritize them, and then you see where you are, and you keep on taking bites of the problem until you get undocumented immigration to a serviceable point.”
Issues at the southern border have been a point of attack for both Trump and Vance, who’ve sought to place blame on Harris and the Biden administration. They’ve pushed that narrative despite Republican lawmakers blocking a “Border Act” from passing earlier this year that would’ve seen the southern border beefed up with more border patrol agents and a hard cap on the number of daily crossings.
Vance’s comments on undocumented immigrants come after it was revealed that he hired mostly Central American migrants for his AppHarvest startup, after pledging employment opportunities for impoverished local communities.
A spokesperson for Vance claimed this week that the Ohio senator was unaware of the company’s hiring practices. The company ran out of money and declared bankruptcy last year with hundreds of millions worth of debt.
“Like all early supporters, [he] believed in AppHarvest’s mission and wishes the company would have succeeded,” the spokesperson said.
