TEXAS: Vice President JD Vance is visiting the US-Mexico border on Wednesday to highlight the tougher immigration policies that the White House says has led to dramatically fewer arrests for illegal crossings since Donald Trump began his second term.
Vance will be joined in Eagle Pass, Texas, by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard as the highest-ranking members of Trump’s Republican administration to visit the southern border.
The White House says Vance is set to tour the border, hold a roundtable with local, state, and federal officials and visit a detention facility. State authorities and local activists say Vance’s itinerary also likely includes a visit to Shelby Park, a municipal greenspace along the Rio Grande that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott seized from federal authorities last year in a feud with the Biden administration. Abbott accused that administration of not doing enough to curb illegal crossings.
“Border security is national security,” Hegseth told Fox News before the trip. He added, “We’re sending those folks home, and we’re not letting more in. And you’re seeing that right now.”
Trump made a crackdown on immigration a centerpiece of his reelection campaign, pledging to halt the tide of migrants entering the US and stop the flow of fentanyl crossing the border. As part of that effort, he imposed 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, saying neither is doing enough to address drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
“They are now strongly embedded in our country. But we are getting them out and getting them out fast,” Trump said of migrants living in the US illegally as he delivered an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night.
Although Trump has not made a trip to the border since Inauguration Day, the visit of three of his top officials is evidence of the scope of his administration’s focus on the issue. He has tasked agencies across the federal government with working to overhaul border and immigration policy, moving well beyond the Department of Homeland Security, the traditional home of most such functions.
Arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico plummeted 39 percent in January from a month earlier, though they’ve been falling sharply since well before Trump took office on Jan. 20 from an all-time high of 250,000 in December 2023. Since then, Mexican authorities increased enforcement within their own borders and President Joe Biden, a Democrat, introduced severe asylum restrictions early last summer.
The Trump administration has showcased its new initiatives, including putting shackled immigrants on US military planes for deportation fights and sending some to the US lockup at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. It has also expanded federal agents’ arrests of people in the US illegally and abandoned programs that gave some permission to stay.
Trump border czar Tom Homan said migrants with criminal records have been prioritized in early efforts to round up and deport people in the US illegally, but he added of other migrants, “If you’re in the county illegally, you’re not off the table.”
“When we find the bad guy, many times they’re with others, others who aren’t a criminal priority, but were in the country illegally,” Homan told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday. “They’re coming, too.”
Since Trump’s second term began, about 6,500 new active duty forces have been ordered to deploy to the southern border. Before that, there were about 2,500 troops already there, largely National Guard troops on active duty orders, along with a couple of hundred active duty aviation forces.
Of those being mobilized, many are still only preparing to go. Last weekend, Hegseth approved orders to send a large portion of an Army Stryker brigade and a general support aviation battalion to the border. Totaling about 3,000 troops, they are expected to deploy in the coming weeks.
Troops are responsible for detection and monitoring along the border but don’t interact with migrants attempting to illegally cross. Instead, they alert border agents, who then take the migrants into custody.
Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with tackling the root causes of immigration during his administration, seeking to zero in on why so many migrants, particularly from Central America, were leaving their homelands and coming to the US seeking asylum or trying to make it into the county illegally.
Harris made her first visit to the border in June 2021, about 3 1/2 months deeper into Biden’s term than Vance’s trip in the opening weeks of Trump’s second term. Trump has routinely joked that Harris was in charge of immigration policy but didn’t visit the border or even maintain close phone contact with federal officials.
Vance’s trip also comes as the Trump administration is considering the use of the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 to detain and deport Venezuelans based on a proclamation labeling the gang Tren de Aragua an invasion force that could be acting at the behest of that country’s government. That’s according to a US official with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.
It is unclear how close the decisions are to being finalized. Some officials have questioned whether the gang is acting as a tool for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the US has not recognized as that country’s legitimate leader. There are some concerns that invoking the law would require the US to more formally recognize Maduro.
Still, the 1798 law allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country with which the US is at war, and it has been mentioned by Trump as a possible tool to speed up his mass deportations.
Vance visits the US-Mexico border to tout Trump’s immigration crackdown
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Vance visits the US-Mexico border to tout Trump’s immigration crackdown
- Vance will be joined in Eagle Pass, Texas, by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
- The White House says Vance is set to tour the border, hold a roundtable with local, state, and federal officials and visit a detention facility
With Iran war exit elusive, Trump aides vie to affect outcome
- Aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East
- In taking America to war, US President Donald Trump offered little explanation
WASHINGTON: A complex tug-of-war inside the White House is driving US President Donald Trump’s shifting public statements on the course of the Iran war, as aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East.
Some officials and advisers are warning Trump that surging gasoline prices could exact a political cost from the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, while some hawks are pressing the president to maintain the offensive against the Islamic Republic, according to interviews with a Trump adviser and others close to the deliberations.
Their observations to Reuters offer a previously unreported glimpse inside White House decision-making as it adjusts its approach to the biggest US military operation since the 2003 Iraq war.
Shifting messages, various internal viewpoints
The behind-the-scenes maneuvering underscores the high stakes Trump, who returned to office last year promising to avoid “stupid” military interventions, faces nearly two weeks after plunging the nation into a war that has rattled global financial markets and disrupted the international oil trade.
The jockeying for Trump’s ear is a feature of his presidency, but this time the consequences are a matter of war and peace in one of the world’s most volatile and economically critical regions.
Shifting from the sweeping goals he framed in launching the war on February 28, Trump in recent days has emphasized that he views the conflict as a limited campaign whose objectives have mostly been met.
But the message remains unclear to many, including the energy markets, which have lurched in both directions in response to Trump’s statements.
He told a campaign-style rally in Kentucky on Wednesday that “we won” the war, then abruptly pivoted: “We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job.”
Economic advisers and officials, including from the Treasury Department and the National Economic Council, have warned Trump that an oil shock and rising gasoline prices could quickly erode domestic support for the war, said the adviser and two others close to the deliberations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions.
Political advisers, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief James Blair, are making similar arguments, focusing on the political fallout from higher gas prices and urging Trump to define victory narrowly and signal the operation is limited and nearly finished, the sources said.
Pushing in the other direction are hawkish voices urging Trump to sustain military pressure on Iran, including Republican lawmakers such as US Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, and media commentators such as Mark Levin, according to people familiar with the matter.
They argue the US must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and respond forcefully to attacks on American troops and shipping.
A third force comes from Trump’s populist base and figures such as strategist Steve Bannon and right-wing television personality Tucker Carlson, who have been pressing him and his top aides to avoid getting dragged into another prolonged Middle East conflict.
“He is allowing the hawks to believe the campaign continues, wants markets to believe the war might end soon and his base to believe escalation will be limited,” the Trump adviser said.
Asked for comment, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “This story is based on gossip and speculation from anonymous sources who aren’t even in the room for any discussions with President Trump.
“The President is known for being a good listener and seeking the opinions of many people, but ultimately everyone knows he’s the final decision maker and his own best messenger,” she said. “The President’s entire team is focused on ensuring the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are fully achieved.”
Other people named for their roles in the deliberations did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions.
Looking for an exit
In taking America to war, Trump offered little explanation, and the administration’s stated war aims have ranged from thwarting an imminent attack by Iran to crippling its nuclear program to replacing its government.
As he seeks an exit from an unpopular conflict, Trump is trying to juggle competing narratives that some critics say have complicated an already difficult situation, with Iran defiant despite the devastating US-Israeli air assault.
Top political aides and economic advisers, whose warnings before the war of the potential economic shock were largely ignored, appear to have played a major role in pushing Trump’s efforts this week to reassure skittish markets and contain rising oil and gas prices.
His public shift to downplaying the war’s impact, describing it as a “short-term excursion,” and his insistence that gas price hikes would be short-lived appeared aimed at calming fears of an open-ended conflict.
Some top aides have advised him to work toward a conclusion to the conflict that he can call a triumph, at least militarily, the sources said, even if much of the Iranian leadership survives, along with remnants of a nuclear program that the campaign was meant to target.
Wave after wave of US and Israeli air strikes have killed a number of top Iranian leaders among some 2,000 people overall – some as far away as Lebanon – devastated its ballistic missile arsenal, sunk much of its navy and degraded its ability to support armed proxies around the Middle East.
But the military achievements have been seriously undercut by Iran’s stepped-up attacks on oil tankers and transport facilities in the Gulf, driving up oil prices.
Trump has said he will decide when to end the campaign. He and his aides say they are far ahead of the four- to six-week timeframe Trump initially announced.
The shifting reasons for launching the conflict, which has spilled over into more than half a dozen other countries, have only made it more difficult to predict what comes next.
For their part, Iran’s rulers will claim victory, analysts say, for simply surviving the US-Israeli onslaught, especially after demonstrating their ability to fight back and inflict damage on Israel, the US and its allies.
Venezuela miscalculation
Critical to the war’s final trajectory will be the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of the world’s oil shipments, which normally traverses the narrow waterway, has come to a near-standstill. Iran in recent days has struck tankers in Iraqi waters and other ships near the strait, and the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed to keep it shut.
If Iran’s stranglehold on the waterway pushes US gas prices high enough, that could increase political pressure on Trump to end the military campaign to help his Republican Party, which is defending narrow majorities in Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Trump has recently refrained from pushing the idea that the war seeks to topple the government in Tehran. US intelligence indicates that Iran’s leadership is not at risk of collapse anytime soon, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
At least some of the confusion over the war’s trajectory appears rooted in the quick US military success in Venezuela.
Since the start of the war, some aides have struggled to convince Trump that the Iran campaign was unlikely to unfold in the same way as the January 3 Venezuela raid that captured President Nicolas Maduro, according to another source familiar with the administration’s thinking.
That operation opened the way for Trump to coerce former Maduro loyalists into giving him considerable sway over the country’s vast oil reserves – without requiring extended US military action.
Iran, by contrast, has proved a much tougher, better-armed foe with an entrenched clerical and security establishment.
Experts have rejected claims by Trump aides that Iran had been within weeks of being able to produce a nuclear weapon, despite the president’s insistence in June that US-Israeli bombing had “obliterated” its nuclear program.
Most of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is believed to have been buried by the June strikes, meaning the material potentially could be retrieved and purified to bomb grade. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons.
If the war drags on, American casualties mount and the economic costs multiply, some analysts say it could erode backing from Trump’s political base. But despite criticism from some supporters opposed to military interventions, members of his “Make America Great Again” movement have so far largely stayed with him on Iran.
“The MAGA base is going to give the president wiggle room,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell.
