Vance says Haitian migrants with protected status are ‘illegal aliens’ to be deported
Sen. JD Vance, the Republican contender for vice president, stated on Wednesday that Haitian immigrants who have legal immigration status are “illegal aliens” who have been unjustly shielded from deportation. He implied that this might alter if Trump were to win the election.
Republicans place a high priority on immigration, and one of Trump’s main campaign pledges was to carry out the “largest-ever deportation” in American history on the first day of his administration, should he win.
After a speech in Raleigh on Wednesday, Vance was asked what the Trump administration would do about legal immigrants. He implied that those immigrants had received protection illegally and criticised Vice President Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, for the use of mass parole and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for new arrivals.
Saying that millions of illegal aliens entering this nation will be granted parole, without considering each case individually, is essentially unlawful, according to Vance. “Just because Kamala Harris waved the amnesty wand does not mean that they are now legally permitted. Her border policy is shameful in light of it, and I will continue to refer to them as illegal aliens.
The interim legal protected status—which shields against deportation but does not offer permanent legal status—for undocumented immigrants from Haiti living in the United States was recently extended by the Biden administration until February 3, 2026. Although Vance primarily discusses Haiti, citizens of over a dozen other nations, such as Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan, can also be awarded TPS
The community of Springfield, Ohio, a mid sized city between Dayton and Columbus, has been roiled by bomb threats, evacuations and harassment towards its residents after Vance, Trump and other Republicans spread lies that Haitian immigrants there were stealing pets and eating them, among other false claims
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Vance’s staff reached out to the Springfield city manager to inquire about the veracity of the provocative claims, learned those claims were false and shared them anyway.
He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” City Manager Bryan Heck told the outlet. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
The harassment and attention reached a fever pitch after Trump mentioned Springfield on the presidential debate stage last week, as part of the Republican push to highlight the Biden administration’s unpopularity in its handling of illegal immigration and border security issues.
In North Carolina, Vance continued to play the role of Trump campaign attack dog, saying the “disgraceful” stance of the Biden-Harris administration on immigration has been, “we’re going to let in millions of illegal aliens to make your housing costs higher, to make your hospitals overwhelmed, to make your local schools impossible for your children to learn in.”
“Who consented?” Vance asked. “Who in this room, who in this country consented to allowing millions of aliens to come into this country unchecked, unvetted? None of us did.”
Vance also deflected a question about how the administration would grapple with the economic aftermath of mass deportations that would disproportionately affect industries like agriculture and construction that rely on migrant labor.
“Well, first of all, if you talk to farmers, farmers are as upset about the open borders as almost anybody else,” he said. “So I think farmers, and certainly I reject the idea that the only way to have a productive farm economy is to allow 25 million legal aliens into this country, it doesn’t make enough sense.”