‘We need to start taking this seriously’: Nikki Haley heads to Texas to become first GOP presidential candidate to visit the border
- Presidential candidate Nikki Haley will become the first candidate to visit the southern border on a trip next week
- GOP Representative Tony Gonzales will join Haley for the trip to his state
- Haley’s immigration plan would redirect money allocated by Biden to bolster staff at the IRS to hire an additional 25,000 border agents
Republican presidential nominee Nikki Haley visits the southern border next week, becoming the first presidential candidate announced to examine the migrant crisis firsthand.
While Donald Trump has made several trips to visit the wall between the US and Mexico, he has not yet done so in his capacity as a presidential candidate.
Haley, accompanied by Texas Republican Representative Tony Gonzales, will travel to southern Texas on April 3, making stops between San Antonio at the northwestern tip of the state to Eagle Pass, some of the areas that have seen the heaviest rain in recent times. migrant traffic. years.
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley next week becomes the first candidate to visit the southern border with a trip, including several stops between El Paso and Eagle Pass, Texas
Migrants gather at a crossing into El Paso, Texas, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, December 20, 2022.
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley’s proposal to deal with the prevailing crisis on the southern border includes cutting new funding to bolster IRS staff to 87,000 total and instead allocating those appropriations to 25,000 new Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Haley was the second person to enter the 2024 GOP primary race, behind only her former boss Donald Trump, for whom she served as the US ambassador to the United Nations.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) impacted more than 2.3 million migrants at the southern border in fiscal year 2022 — and FY2023 is on track to surpass those record numbers.
Meeting figures fell in January and February for the first time in six months.
But the crisis continues as a large group of more than 1,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, rushed through the border checkpoint from Juarez, Mexico to El Paso, Texas, on March 12.
The mob failed to cross the US-Mexico border, with Mexican military and CBP agents preventing them from entering.
Haley’s immigration plan includes requiring all companies to use E-Verify to verify the legal status of potential employees. She would also redirect money allocated to bolster staff at the IRS to hire an additional 25,000 border agents. Pictured: Migrants attempt to cross a barrier at the Paso del Norte International Bridge on March 12, 2023
Republican Representative Tony Gonzales will accompany Haley on the trip to his state to investigate the border crisis
If she becomes president, Haley also vows to cut funding from states that give money to those who entered the country illegally. An example of this practice is New York, where $2.1 billion of the state budget was allocated to undocumented immigrants who lost their jobs during the pandemic — with one-time payments of up to $15,600 per person, according to the New York Times.
During a Fox News interview earlier this month, Haley said, “We’re fixing [the border crisis] by going back to Remain-in-Mexico, we fix it by stopping catch and release, we fix it by putting up a real wall and closing our border.”
“But we’re doing it by doing what I did in South Carolina as governor,” she added.
“We did a mandatory E-Verify program that said none of our companies were allowed to hire anyone who was in this country illegally. That’s what got them out of South Carolina because there were no jobs they could come to that’s what’s going to get them out of this country we need to make sure none of our companies hire anyone who’s here in the country illegally , and we need to start taking this seriously. Every state is a border state.’