J.D. Vance’s Fascist Threat Against All Immigrants—“Illegal” or Not

Speaking to the press Wednesday in front of a crowd of his supporters in North Carolina, J.D. Vance escalated his attacks on immigrants, claiming that even those here legally are in fact “illegal” and subject to deportation.

A reporter asked Vance about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he falsely accused of killing and eating pets. As the reporter noted, the majority of those immigrants are legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, so they wouldn’t be subject to a future Trump administration’s plans to deport all undocumented immigrants. 

Vance’s response was that he still considered them “illegal,” calling the question “a media and Kamala Harris fact-check.”

“Now the media loves to say that the Haitian migrants … they are here legally. And what they mean is that Kamala Harris used two separate programs: mass parole and temporary protective status. She used two programs to wave a wand and to say, ‘We’re not going to deport those people here,’” Vance said. 

“Well, if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally, and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien. An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal. That is not how this works,” Vance added as his supporters cheered. 

"I'm still gonna call them an illegal alien" -- JD Vance on Haitian migrants who are in Ohio legally pic.twitter.com/phe5yjiUyd

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2024

Vance’s remarks Wednesday are in line with his attacks on legal immigration on CNBC last week, claiming that “if the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous city in the world.” 

This stance flies in the face of what Vance was saying years before he entered politics. In 2012, Vance attacked the Republican Party’s immigration policies at the time, saying that a plan to mass deport “millions of unregistered aliens … fails to pass the laugh test.”  It also flies in the face of the fact that his wife, Usha, is the daughter of Indian immigrants. 

Vance’s North Carolina remarks are disturbing, as he is now calling legal immigrants illegal without knowing anything about how they entered the country, claiming that they were magically made legal by the Biden administration in an illegal action. If Trump or another Republican “waved a magic wand,” it’s doubtful that Vance would be making the same claim. It also sends the message that the chaotic and inhumane immigration policies from Trump’s first administration would be even worse if he is elected again.