Haley Campaign Press Release - Haley on Immigration: "Trump Needs to Stay Out of It, Period"

DENVER, Colo. — In a campaign stop in Denver yesterday, Nikki Haley talked about the growing immigration crisis and shared a stark message with Donald Trump: "Stay out of it, period."

Every day Joe Biden and Congress refuse to fix the border crisis, is another day America's national security is at risk. Haley called on Congress to get in a room and do its job instead of blindly listening to Trump who demanded Republicans sit on their hands so he can use the border crisis as a political cudgel in the election. Once again, Trump is putting himself ahead of America's national security.

"Let's talk about the border. Denver has had more illegal immigrants come here than any city in America. Per capita. It is unbelievable what is happening. I can't believe this is the United States of America. When I was governor of South Carolina, we passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country. President Obama sued us over it, and we won.

"But it can never be acceptable that we had nine million illegal immigrants come across that border. We had more fentanyl come last year than would kill every single American. Number one cause of death for adults 18 to 45? Fentanyl. And don't think for a second China doesn't know what they're doing when they send it over. So I want to take what we did in South Carolina and I want to go national with it. I want to do a national E-Verify where every business has to prove that the people they hire are in this country legally.

"Let's defund sanctuary cities once and for all. We're going to put 25,000 border patrol and ICE agents on the ground and let them do their job. We're going to go back to the Remain in Mexico policy so that nobody can step foot on U.S. soil. And instead of catch and release, we're going to go to catch and deport. That is how we will stop the battle for the border. "So look at what happened last week. Congress had a border bill. Now that border bill had a good part about it. It strengthened asylum laws. We need to strengthen asylum laws. Three million illegal immigrants came in under Trump's watch because the asylum laws weren't strong enough. But where it was weak, it didn't have the Remain in Mexico policy. We need that. And it had a 5,000-person threshold. We can't even have a one-person threshold. We can't have anybody coming across the border over here. But what went wrong is Congress should have gotten in the room, strengthened the bill, and not left until they got it done. But what happened? Donald Trump comes in, says don't pass anything until after the general election, and Congress went home on vacation for two weeks. We can't wait. We can't wait one more day to pass a strong immigration bill. We've gotta get it done. Congress needs to do their job, and Trump needs to stay out of it, period."