Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he expects deportations of illegal migrants and “pro-Hamas” student visa holders, like Mahmoud Khalil, to “rise” as the Trump administration builds the capacity to detain and eventually remove such individuals.
“We do this sequentially,” Vance explained in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, noting that the Trump administration is first trying to seal the southern border before ramping up deportations.
“We’ve almost accomplished complete border security,” the vice president said, touting a “well over 95%” reduction in migrant encounters since President Trump took office in January.
“So once you get operative control of the border, now you have to ramp up deportations,” Vance continued.
The vice president argued that former President Joe Biden “underfunded” migrant detention facilities and “destroyed” Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leaving the Trump administration with “a hole that we have to dig out of.”
“We’re building that capacity up,” he said. “I do think that you’re going to see those deportation numbers rise.”
Trump has been “impatient” with the process, his veep revealed.
“Even the president, every single day in private and in public, is asking, ‘How do we get those deportation numbers up,’” Vance told Ingraham, arguing that “it’s good to have a leader who’s impatient to get things done.”
About 37,660 people were deported during the president’s first month in office, according to Reuters, and 70% of ICE arrestees under Trump had criminal records or were facing charges, the agency said earlier this week.
“I think those deportation numbers are going to come up,” Vance said. “You’ve already started to see some real progress. We’re going to make more.”
When asked about the arrest of Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil, whom the Trump administration has accused of circulating “pro-Hamas propaganda flyers,” Vance argued that the green-card holder doesn’t have an “indefinite right to be in the United States.”
“This is not fundamentally about free speech, and to me, yes, it’s about national security, but it’s also more importantly about who do we as an American public decide gets to join our national community?” Vance said. “And if the secretary of state and the president decide this person shouldn’t be in America, and they have no legal right to stay here, it’s as simple as that.
“I think we’ll certainly see some people who get deported on student visas if we determine that it’s not in the best interest of the United States to have them in our country,” he continued.
“I don’t know how high that number is going to be, but you’re going to see more people.”
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