Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that he’s against deploying the military for mass deportations.
“I will not support and will not vote to use the military in our cities. I think it’s a terrible image,” Paul told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the transition team, announced that the president-elect is ready to “marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history while simultaneously lowering costs for families.”
Despite opposing military involvement, Paul clarified he still backs enforcement. While he doesn’t “recommend” using the army for deportations, Rand would support using the FBI, ICE, and Border Patrol.
“If they send the army into New York, and you have 10,000 troops marching, carrying semiautomatic weapons, I think it’s a terrible image, and I will oppose that. But it’s not that I oppose removing people,” he noted.
Meanwhile, over the weekend, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) doubled down on Trump’s approach and voiced his approval for using the military to address undocumented immigration.
During an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” he stated, “I support the president.”
“We have a national security crisis in this country right now because of our open border, and when he declares it a national emergency, he can appropriately use the military,” Barrasso continued. “There are over 10 million illegal immigrants in the country right now.”
They Wyoming senator didn’t stop there. He claimed most Americans support mass deportations under Trump amongst skyrocketing migrant crime.
“Yet we still have some of these big city mayors and governors who unbelievably, are more concerned about the rights, the so called rights of illegal immigrants than they are about the safety of their own citizens,” he continued.
“We have to make America safe again, and what the president is talking about is the right thing to do.”
During Paul’s interview, he also addressed Denver’s resistance to immigration enforcement.
Denver’s mayor Mike Johnston had declared he would deploy the city’s police force to block ICE agents from operating there, going as far as to describe it as a potential “Tiananmen Square moment.”
Paul dismissed Johnston’s defiance, calling it unlawful. “If he’s going to resist federal law, which there’s a longstanding history of the supremacy of federal law, if he’s going to resist that, it will go all the way to the Supreme Court,” he told CBS. “And I would suspect that he would be removed from office.”
“I don’t know whether or not there’d be a criminal prosecution for someone resisting federal law, but he will lose,” he added.
“And people need to realize that what he is offering is a form of insurrection, where the states resist the federal government.”
Paul wrapped up by stating, “The mayor of Denver is on the wrong side of history, and, really, I think, will face legal ramifications if he doesn’t obey the federal law.”
