On Monday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE Director under President Obama, stated that President Donald Trump took on the longstanding problem of countries refusing to take their nationals who are deported back and did so in a much stronger way than has been used before, which shows “the President has elevated immigration enforcement and border security to the highest levels of national security and foreign policy in the United States.”
Host Connell McShane asked, “There was a lot of back and forth yesterday, then Colombia, I guess, backs down, according to the White House, trade war on hold. Your view on how the whole thing played out?”
Sandweg answered, “One of the greatest impediments that President Trump has to his mass deportation plan [is] recalcitrant countries. And this has been a problem in immigration enforcement going back 20, 25 years. There are certain countries who just won’t take their people back, and then other countries who are very selective about the people they will take back. Typically, the only response you have — because the United States just can’t forcibly deport people back to another country without authorization — the response you have is diplomatic. But, more often than not, it’s been very low-level diplomacy. So, we send a diplomatic note, maybe we send a delegation to complain about the fact these countries won’t take their people back.”
Sandweg continued, “This was a stunning, obviously, very powerful response. Never have I seen the president of the United States get this involved in it and where he’s going to invoke all of the tools available to foreign policy, sanctions, visa restrictions, tariffs, right? But I will say this, that it kind of highlights what we’ve seen writ large, which is that the President has elevated immigration enforcement and border security to the highest levels of national security and foreign policy in the United States. And really, this ended up being nothing more than kind of consistent with that, saying this is a top national security priority of the United States.”
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