Trump to make immigration speech on Texas border visit

Former President Donald Trump is returning to the southern border Sunday in Texas, the largest red state in the nation, to deliver a speech on his bringing back border policies to end President Joe Biden’s open border.

“On my first day back in the White House, I will terminate every open-borders policy of the Biden administration,” Trump told a Fort Dodge, Iowa, campaign event Saturday night. “I will stop the invasion on our southern border and begin [the]largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

After serving meals to National Guard soldiers, troopers, and others who will be stationed at the border over Thanksgiving, Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks at South Texas International Airport in Edinburg, Texas, on Sunday afternoon.

He will be appearing with Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who himself has hailed building the southern border wall in his state and is expected to return the favor on an endorsement.

“Texas is the first and only state in America to build our own border wall,” Abbott wrote Saturday on X. “Until Biden steps up to secure the border, Texas will continue to take historic action to protect our state and our nation.”

Trump has laid out dozens of Agenda47 policies since announcing his 2024 presidential campaign, including the following ones dealing directly with curbing Biden’s mass-migration crisis at the border:

Trump also vows to bring back extreme vetting of legal immigrants, including “ideological screening” to bar “Christian-hating communists and Marxists” and “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs” from entering the United States.

“Those who come to and join our country must love our country,” Trump said.

“If you empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified. If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified. If you support Hamas or any ideology that’s having to do with that or any of the other really sick thoughts that go through people’s minds — very dangerous thoughts — you’re disqualified.”

Trump’s border policies are generally panned by the left and supported by his GOP primary challengers, but Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to hit Trump for failing to build the border wall and not sticking to his vow that “Mexico will pay for it.”

But Trump addressed that latter criticism Saturday night in his Fort Dodge, Iowa, speech, saying Mexico paid for the border wall by committing 28,000 of their troops to monitoring the border on Mexico’s dollar during the Trump administration – a fact he says is lost on his critics.

In Abbott, Trump has more than just a campaign ally. He has an equivalent border hawk, as Abbott has denounced the Biden administration for being “derelict” in their duty to defend the southern border in Texas.

Abbott is expected to soon sign what would be one of Texas’ most aggressive measures to date: a law that allows police officers to arrest migrants suspected of entering the country illegally and empowers judges to effectively deport them. The measure is a dramatic challenge to the U.S. government’s authority over immigration. It already has already drawn rebuke from Mexico.

Trump had been critical of Abbott for being “missing in action” on Texas State House Republicans’ failed impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, another Trump ally, but Texas remains a pivotal state in the GOP primary and the 2024 Electoral College vote for president.

Not only does Trump hold a majority support among Texas GOP primary voters, but he is running away from the field with a 46.5-point edge in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

And winning Texas is a potential straight line for 40 Electoral College votes – up from 38 in 2020 due to migration from blue states. Trump maintains a lead over Biden in Texas just under double digits in recent polling.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.