Speaking at a rally in Holland, a town in West Michigan’s Allegan County on Tuesday, October 29, United States Senator from Ohio and 2024 Republican Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance stood down a woke reporter and argued that those who came to America illegally need to pack their bags because they’ll be deported. This wasn’t the first time that the senator used the line.

Such is what he said when speaking to a crowd of around 500 at a HES, a family-owned and operated heavy equipment supplier on the south side of Holland. During his speech, Sen. Vance focused in particular on the immigration policies and practices of the Biden-Harris Administration, particularly the open border.

Sen. Vance said, on that note, “Kamala Harris’ campaign says she has nothing to do with policies from Joe Biden, even though she’s the sitting vice president of the United States. Harris is more of the same broken border policies, more expensive groceries and housing, more of a broken leadership.”

And, commenting on how illegal immigration impacts schools in the states, the senator said, ““We know that a lot of those students don’t even speak English. Now, what happens to the quality of Michigan schools when you have thousands upon thousands of children who don’t even speak English?”

Continuing with that thought about schools, he said, “Because we know what that means, the guidance counselors and everybody else have to distract resources from the children of American citizens to focus on the children of people who shouldn’t be here, and that makes everybody’s education worse off.”

Further, speaking on the matter of bag packing, he said, “Our attitude is, if you came in this country illegally, pack your bags. There are 425,000 illegal alien criminals in the United States of America today — 13,000 of them are murderers, and, of course, a lot of other criminals beyond that.”

This isn’t the first time that Sen. Vance was asked about the matter. He was also pressed by a journalist on the matter, with the journalist asking what he says to people who think illegal immigration isn’t the biggest issue. She asked, “What do you say to the people in Michigan who say immigration really isn’t that big of a problem here?”

Vance said, “Well, I appreciate the question Janelle, and I’d say that interestingly, legal immigrants often suffer the most from illegal immigration. If you look at the effect on legal immigrants wages, if you look at the jobs that they’re working in, and if you look at the communities that they’re living in that are most affected by the public safety problems caused by illegal immigration. My message to legal immigrants was one we love to have you. You’re very welcome, and we’re happy that you came through the proper channels.”

He continued, “But this illegal immigration problem is very often, it falls hardest on legal immigrants more than anybody else, and so my message is, our anti illegal immigration platform is actually going to make your life better. It’s going to make your wages go up. It’s going to make public safety in your communities better. Look, I’m I’m married to the daughter of legal immigrants. I do believe in my heart that legal immigration can enrich this country, but not illegal immigration, which is what Kamala Harris has done all over this country. It’s made us less safe. It’s driven down wages for working Americans, and it’s made our communities less prosperous. We’ve got to stop this craziness.

He then added, “President Trump and I are going to do it and on on that, on that topic, I know that was the last question, but let me just offer one final observation again about these guys in the back. Law enforcement is fundamentally a team effort. You need the federal government to do what it needs to do. You need the state government and the local governments to be empowered to keep people safe. What is so broken about American public safety? It’s not our local police officers who are doing great things. It’s not our state leadership who’s very often doing great things. It is the federal government allowing criminals who shouldn’t be here, promoting sex trafficking and drug trafficking at our southern border. It is making these guys jobs so much more difficult, and it’s making it difficult in ways that we don’t even always see.”

Building on that, Vance said, “I talked earlier to these to these guys behind me. A little bit earlier, we talked about the fact that when they have illegal aliens and they have to provide food and housing for those illegal aliens that’s precious tax dollars that don’t go into hiring additional officers that they need. So we have been put in a zero sum situation by Kamala Harris, where we can prioritize the interests of American citizens and their safety, or we can prior to prioritize the health benefits of illegal aliens. We have got to prioritize our own citizens. This crime problem is a policy choice of Kamala Harris. We can do so much better.”

He was then asked, what a deportation campaign in America, carried out by the Trump Administration, would look like, with the journalist asking, “What is the plan from the Trump team to execute this mass deportation? What will that look like in the United States? How will you make that happen?”

Getting to the “pack your bags” comment in his response, Vance said, “The message from the Trump administration is simple, pack your bags, because in four months, you’re going home. We do not consent to an invasion of this country for millions of people who shouldn’t be here, and we are going to deport people now. You start with the people who are most dangerous. You start with the most violent criminals. You make it harder for businesses to hire illegal aliens, and you work your way down from there, and I think that’s how you solve the problem of the people who’re here. But if you’re not willing to tell at least some of the people who are in this country illegally that you have to go back, then you don’t have a real border policy. And unfortunately, that’s what Kamala Harris has given this country.”

Watch him here:

Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video