Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) said that the mass deportation of illegal immigrants proposed by former President Donald Trump should begin with 1 million people.
Vance discussed immigration policy on ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning. Vance, who was chosen as Trump’s running mate, said he was “extremely confident” in their chances of winning the election in November and elaborated on their immigration plan.
The remarks come after Trump discussed his plans to deport illegal immigrants during an interview with TIME earlier this year. During the interview, Trump discussed his plans to deport millions of people who are in the United States illegally should he be elected, saying that he would use the National Guard to help mobilize the effort.
“I don’t believe this is sustainable for a country, what’s happening to us, with probably 15 million and maybe as many as 20 million by the time Biden’s out,” Trump said. “Twenty million people, many of them from jails, many of them from prisons, many of them from mental institutions. I mean, you see what’s going on in Venezuela and other countries. They’re becoming a lot safer.”
Vance said that he and Trump would take a “sequential approach” to the matter.
“You start with what’s achievable,” Vance said. “I think that if you deport a lot of violent criminals and frankly if you make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers, I think you go a lot of the way to solving the illegal immigration problem.”
“I think it’s interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let’s start with 1 million. That’s where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there,” Vance said.
Vance also discussed during the interview how he thinks the U.S. should be more pro-family. Vance, and other Republican lawmakers, have had concerns about the country’s declining birthrate and have pushed for pro-family policies.
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He also reacted to some of the criticism the campaign has received over comments he made about “childless cat ladies” while on then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show and said his words had been distorted.
“Do I regret saying it? I regret that the media and the Kamala Harris campaign has, frankly, distorted what I said,” Vance said. “They turn this into a policy proposal that I never made. … I said, I want us to be more pro-family, and I do want us to be more pro-family.”