Speaking during a Sunday, May 19 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with host Kristen Welker, Sen. Marco Rubio, a rumored contender for Trump’s VP slot, defended the former president’s call for mass deportation of illegal immigrants, saying that the massive number of illegal immigrants means something drastic must be done to combat the illegal immigration crisis.
That came when Welker brought up the deportation pledge former President Donald Trump made, saying, “If reelected, Donald Trump said he is willing to put migrant detention camps and to deport more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, and it would be the largest deportation plan in American history. Do you support that plan?”
Responding, Sen. Rubio first noted that Welker’s numbers were off and that, while there. might have only been eleven million or so illegal immigrants a decade ago, the number now is likely much higher, perhaps double or triple that number. He said, “Eleven million, that was the number ten years ago. We’re talking upwards of 25 to 30 million.”
That came toward the end of the response he gave. Before correcting her numbers, Sen. Rubio defended the idea of mass deportations, noting that vetting them is near impossible because their home nations don’t have document systems and that, therefore, we don’t know who they are.
Making that point, he said, “The answer to your question is yes. We cannot absorb 25, 30 million people who entered this country illegally. What country on earth would tolerate that? We don’t even know who most of these people are. They’re talking about vetting them, vet what? They’re coming with nations that don’t have document systems.”
Then, building on that point, he argued that something dramatic needs to be done to correct the illegal immigration issue, getting to his point that the real numbers are much higher than she said. In his words, “Unfortunately, we’ll have to do something dramatic to remove people from this country that are here illegally, especially people we know nothing about, and 10 million, 11 million was the number 15 years ago. Today, it’s upwards of 25, 30 million, maybe more.”
He added that legal immigration is different from mass migration and illegal immigration, with the latter two being problematic. Doing so, Sen. Rubio told Welker, “This is not immigration. You asked me about immigration. This is mass migration, mass migration. This an invasion of the country, and it needs to be dealt with dramatically.”
Watch him here:
https://x.com/ICU1010/status/1792208741183496215
Rubio’s comments come as about half of Americans, including a shocking 42% of Democrats, say that they are in favor of mass deportations of illegal immigrants, according to Axios. Further, Axios reports, a massive 30% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans say that they are in favor of ending birthright citizenship.
Rubio’s response to Welker is a big change from when, in 2015, he said, “We have 12 or 13 million human beings who have been here for a long time. There’s not really a realistic way of rounding up and deporting 12 or 13 million people and our nation wouldn’t want to do that anyway. It does need to be addressed and it does need to be addressed in a series of manners; we’re not going to be able to do it in one big piece of legislation – we learned that two years ago, the last time we tried.”
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