by Frank Holmes, reporter
Republicans want the next president to take the border seriously.
Polls show 70 percent of Republicans say illegal immigration is “a very big problem”—and they want solutions.
Republican presidential hopeful and Florida governor Ron DeSantis provided his answers on Monday morning in the heart of Joe Biden’s out-of-control border: Eagle Pass, Texas.
“I will declare a national emergency on day one and will not rest until we build the wall, shut down illegal entry, and win the war against the drug cartels,” he told a receptive crowd beaten by the Texas sun on Monday.
The DeSantis plan offers specific policies to seal the border and secure the homeland, and it can be divided into four parts.
Here’s what’s in it.
#1: STOPPING THE INVASION
DeSantis plans to end the Biden-Harris policy of catch-and-release, restore the Remain-in-Mexico policy, beef up the Border Patrol, and let agents do their jobs instead of bogging them down babysitting illegal aliens and doing paperwork.
He also wants to dismantle the magnets drawing illegals to the United States by using e-Verify to ban employers from hiring illegals and saying the Constitution doesn’t grant birthright citizenship—the doctrine that has illegals hoping to give birth to an “anchor baby” on U.S. soil.
He’ll tax the money illegals wire back to their relatives in foreign countries—really making Mexico pay for the wall.
He plans to “turn the screws on sanctuary jurisdictions,” and DeSantis promised to end all government funding to groups that help illegals cross the border.
#2: BUILDING THE WALL
If he’s elected president, DeSantis said he’ll finish what Donald Trump started, filling in the 600 miles of the border currently unprotected by any border wall and calling in the military to defend the contractors during construction.
“No excuses,” DeSantis said. “We will get it done.”
#3: SHOOT CARTEL MEMBERS IF NECESSARY
The military will play a big role in DeSantis’ border plan to stop the cartels: He plans to identify cartels as transnational criminal organizations and let U.S. agents shoot—and if necessary, kill—the human traffickers and drug smugglers killing more than 100,000 Americans a year with illegal drugs.
“If the cartels are cutting through the border wall trying to run product into this country, they’re going to end up stone-cold dead,” said DeSantis. “If you drop a couple of these cartel operatives, they’ll stop coming,” the governor continued.
DeSantis carefully pointed out that the Border Patrol would shoot cartel members, not any and every illegal alien entering the country—and that the shooting wouldn’t start until the service drew up rules of engagement.
But after that, the gloves are off.
“Would you let somebody just break into your house and do you harm? No. And I can tell you in Texas they wouldn’t.” And they won’t do that in DeSantis’ America, either.
#4: WORK WITH LOCAL COMMUNITIES
DeSantis plans to let local authorities help secure the border—just as he sent his state National Guard to defend the Texas border twice in the last two years.
“Texans are pretty frustrated overall by not only the lack of results from the federal government, but also the fact that the border remains open even with a Republican-controlled state,” said Luke Macias, a Republican consultant.
Take a look —
While in Eagle Pass, Texas, I have seen firsthand the crisis at our southern border.
Millions of illegal aliens are flooding across the border and tens of thousands of Americans are dying from fentanyl that is being smuggled into our country. This is a massive dereliction of… pic.twitter.com/4txKrkh28Z
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) June 26, 2023
The speech shows DeSantis does not plan to let Donald Trump coast on the border.
“DeSantis has stolen the only good thing about Trump – immigration,” wrote onetime Trump supporter Ann Coulter. “Even better, unlike Trump, he’s not a bulls–t artist.”
But Trump supporters sniped back at the Florida governor, who presents Trump’s most serious challenge to securing his third Republican presidential nomination. “DeSantis announced his ‘border plan’ just a few miles away from Trump’s BORDER WALL, that Team DeSantis claims ‘was never built,’” said Karoline Leavitt of the MAGA War Room. “Republicans overwhelmingly trust Donald Trump on immigration because he delivered. And he will deliver again.”
The Trump Team accused DeSantis of “copying and pasting” Trump’s plan.
Either way, he’s focused and serious. DeSantis visited Tuscon, Arizona, earlier this month, making the Texas trip the governor’s second visit to the border—more trips to the border in one month than President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have made over the last two-and-a-half years.
“The White House is occupied by a man who couldn’t care less about border security,” DeSantis said.
His detailed plan makes it clear: If he’s elected, all that will change.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”