A Republican lawmaker's defense of former President Donald Trump's mass deportation proposal boasts that the number of immigrants who would be "rounded up" equals the population of several U.S. States.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) appeared Wednesday on the Fox Business Network to defend Trump and push back on host Stuart Varney's skepticism that ICE agents, along with the National Guard and federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, could deport as many as 9 million migrants.
"President Trump is going to try," Waltz said. "That's the population of Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont that will have to be cleaned out, rounded up and deported. It is an industrial-size scale problem, and it's shameful."
Varney again expressed doubt, saying Trump's proposal would result in "one of the largest migrations in history," and if successfully carried out would dwarf the estimated 1.3 million undocumented Mexican immigrants deported during "Operation Wetback" under president Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.
Trump spoke approvingly of that horrifically named operation in the early days of his 2016 presidential campaign, saying that Eisenhower moved more than a million "illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them way south."
Government officials at the time considered that large-scale operation a success, but immigration from Mexico resumed right away and demand for Mexican labor never waned, and nearly 40 percent of the 10.5 million undocumented migrants currently in the U.S. are Mexican nationals, in addition to about 2.2 million undocumented people originally from Central America.
Trump's plan would require the construction of massive camps to house migrants awaiting deportation, and a source confirmed that he would redirect funds from the Pentagon to pay for the operation if Congress refused to fund it.
“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error," said Stephen Miller, the former president's chief adviser on immigration. "Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.”
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