As JD Vance trotted out yet another pathetic defense of his opposition to the bipartisan border security deal today, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Let’s be clear: the bipartisan border deal would have been the toughest, fairest bipartisan reforms to secure the border and stop drug trafficking in decades – but JD Vance would rather lie about it and play politics than get something done for the American people. Enough is enough. Americans are sick and tired of the weak spin and pathetic misrepresentations from politicians like Vance and Donald Trump who put their self-serving political interests ahead of our border security.”

NEW: JD Vance made a bizarre claim that the border deal “was not a real border bill” after admitting just two weeks ago that he opposed efforts to improve our immigration system, secure our border, and detect fentanyl coming into our country.

Vance: “[The border deal] was not a real border bill.” 

Vance: “The border deal was a disaster. I would not have voted for it if Donald Trump told me you have to vote for this thing.”

Trump killed the bipartisan border deal despite its strong provisions that won support from the Border Patrol with policies Republicans had previously championed.

New York Times: “Republicans Against Border Enforcement”

Vox: “Trump made this clear when he reportedly urged Republicans in Congress to turn against the bipartisan Senate border security bill scheduled for a vote Wednesday so that he could keep the issue alive through the presidential election. His supporters have largely fallen in line.”

CNN: “Trump, who is hoping to make immigration a key plank of his presidential campaign, has suggested on Truth Social that approving additional resources for the border would make Republicans ‘look bad.’”

Rolling Stone: “Border Patrol Supports ‘Strong’ Immigration Deal. Republicans Don’t Care”

Trump: “Please blame it on me.”

Trump: “I think [Republicans] are making a terrible mistake if they vote for the bill.”

CNN: “The border compromise would represent a dramatic change of immigration law on lines many Republicans have long supported.”

Two-thirds of Americans support the bipartisan border security deal that Vance fell in line with Trump to oppose.

Navigator Research: “Two in Three Americans Support the Bipartisan Immigration Deal”

“On the Republican approach to the recent immigration package, Americans’ greatest concerns are that they are focused on the wrong issues and playing politics.

“The immigration deal earns support across party lines, including among three in four Republicans (net +58; 74 percent support –16 percent oppose), two in three independents (net +48; 64 percent support – 16 percent oppose), and three in five Democrats (net +32; 59 percent support – 27 percent oppose).”

Third Way: “Voters like the deal, both as a whole and individual components. … Across the board, both swing and base voters are remarkably aligned in favor of the big security components of the deal… It’s not just the tough on the border policies that voters like—they also understand that a major piece of restoring order must be providing orderly pathways for people to come to this country in other ways.” 

Vance has defended Trump’s racist immigration rhetoric and shares Trump’s extreme and cruel Project 2025 immigration agenda that includes ripping apart families, rounding up people into detention camps, and using the military to carry out mass deportations.

New York Times: “Mr. Vance’s views on immigration largely echo Mr. Trump.”

The Hill: “‘[Trump] said illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country, which is objectively and obviously true’ … Vance said.”

New York Times: “Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans”

“To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.

“Such camps could also enable the government to speed up the pace and volume of deportations of undocumented people who have lived in the United States for years and so are not subject to fast-track removal.

[…]

“Mr. Miller said the new camps would likely be built ‘on open land in Texas near the border.’

“He said the military would construct them under the authority and control of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Politico: “If he wins the 2024 election, Trump intends to reimplement many of his first-term policies, including the so-called Muslim ban and the use of Title 42 to turn away asylum seekers. He also wants to deport migrants by the millions per year, detaining them in large camps while they await expulsion. … The former president further wants to end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants.

“Stephen Miller, a senior aide who crafted many of Trump’s first-term policies, is once again heavily involved in the planning.”

CNN: “Trump plots mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants should he regain power”

Vox: “Trump’s immigration policies are his old ones — but worse”

Donald Trump’s inner orbit of MAGA extremists includes Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, architects of Trump’s cruel family separation policy who both have ties to Project 2025.

NBC News: “In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president’s most senior advisers were called to the White House Situation Room, where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide the fate of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller led the meeting, and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as defiance by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. … At the meeting, Miller accused anyone opposing zero tolerance of being a lawbreaker and un-American, according to the two officials present.”

The Week: “Former Trump staffers involved with Project 2025 include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, the latter of whom has been described as a white nationalist.” 

CNN: “Project 2025’s proposals for reforming the country’s immigration laws appear heavily influenced by those who helped execute Trump’s early enforcement measures. Former acting US Customs and Border Protection chief Mark Morgan and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Tom Homan – the faces of Trump’s polarizing policies – contributed to the project, as did Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, one of the policy advisers pushing to end certain immigrant protections behind the scenes.”

New York Times: “The White Nationalist Websites Cited by Stephen Miller”

NBC News: “Homan was an early proponent of the administration’s controversial ‘zero tolerance’ policy, which resulted in at least 5,500 families being separated at the southern border in 2018.”

Mother Jones: “On the Anniversary of Family Separation, the Heritage Foundation Hosted the Policy’s Intellectual ‘Father’”

“Homan is also helping lay the groundwork for a potential second Trump presidency’s mass deportation plans.”

The Week: “The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 wants to reshape America under Trump”

Los Angeles Times: “Trump appears at a fundraiser for a creator of his ‘family separation’ policy”