As JD Vance visits the border today, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“JD Vance already played political games with our border security before when he caved to Trump’s self-serving demands to ‘kill’ the toughest, fairest bipartisan border deal in decades for Trump’s own political gain. That’s why he sided with Trump over border patrol agents and the American people to block funding to secure the border and efforts to detect fentanyl – and that’s why Vance continues to push Trump’s cruel and divisive Project 2025 immigration agenda. The Trump-Vance ticket has already proven they’ll put politics ahead of the American people, and voters are ready to support Vice President Harris because they can trust her to deliver real solutions and fix our broken immigration system.”

JD Vance caved to Donald Trump’s demands by helping tank bipartisan legislation to improve our immigration system and border security and detect fentanyl coming over the border.

JD Vance: “[The bipartisan border security bill] does nothing to secure the border.” 

May 2024: Vance voted against advancing the bipartisan border security deal.

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 away children from their parents, 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.”

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.” 

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”