CBS moderators only closed both candidates’ microphones once in the 90 minutes of the vice presidential debate: during the segment on immigration. For 10 minutes, JD Vance and Tim Walz traded blows on issues such as border security, fentanyl, the great deportation that Donald Trump promises, family separation… and Haitian immigrants. It was this last issue that led to turning off the microphones. The moderators attempted to change the subject and focus the conversation on the economy, but Vance continued to speak over them to defend false comments he has made about the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio. When Walz launched into an answer, both were silenced. “No one can hear them,” the moderators warned.
Although Vance adopted a somewhat more moderate tone tonight when talking about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants—for example, instead of insisting that they are eating their neighbors’ pets, he chose to say that their arrival in this town has brought the city “to their limit”—he continued calling them “illegal.” The Republican vice presidential candidate repeated his criticism of the temporary protected status, or TPS, program under which most Haitian immigrants are in the country legally. Both Trump and Vance believe this program is illegal, and tonight the Ohio senator described it as an “amnesty” that has harmed small communities like Springfield by overwhelming local resources.
“Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, has a large number of Haitian immigrants who have legal status, temporary protected status,” moderator Margaret Brennan noted in rebuttal. TPS allows people from countries designated by the Department of Homeland Security to legally live and work in the United States, but does not include a path to permanent residency or citizenship. The Barack Obama Administration granted this protection to Haitians living illegally in the United States in 2010 and the Joe Biden Government renewed it this summer.
For his part, Walz accused Vance of dehumanizing the Haitian community. “This is what happens with an issue when you don’t want to resolve it. It is demonized,” he said. “By being with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a topic of conversation, and when it becomes a topic of conversation like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings,” he added.
Another issue that dominated much of the discussion around immigration had to do with the “largest deportation in history” that the Trump-Vance ballot promises to carry out. It is a proposal that, according to recent surveys, has the support of more than half of all voters, regardless of political affiliation, despite the fact that neither of the two Republicans has specified how this great expulsion of millions of irregular immigrants would be carried out. . And when Vance was explicitly asked tonight to detail the plan, all he said was that deportations would begin with “criminals.” “There are a million immigrants who have committed some type of crime, let’s start with them,” he said, even without explaining how or when.
The moderators insisted and asked him twice if Trump would deport undocumented parents whose children were born on US soil and, therefore, are citizens. In effect, they asked: will the Republican return to separating immigrant families, as he already did during his first term under the “zero tolerance” policy on the border? Vance dodged the question both times. Instead of giving a direct response, the vice presidential candidate attacked Democrats: “We already have massive family separations thanks to Kamala’s open borders policy,” he said. “It’s Kamala’s fault,” he concluded.
The senator also accused Harris of allowing cartels to “operate freely in this country” and claimed that they use children to smuggle drugs into the country. The relationship between immigration and drugs was a topic that Vance — whose mother struggled with drug addiction throughout his childhood — turned to several times during the debate. “Kamala Harris let in fentanyl at record levels,” he said.
Like Harris did during her debate against Trump in September, Walz referred on multiple occasions to the failed immigration bill that the former president effectively shot down earlier this year, despite having the support of both parties. for political reasons. The legislation would have limited access to asylum and included a larger budget for Border Patrol agents, immigration judges and technology to detect contraband such as fentanyl.
“Trump said ‘no,’ and told them to vote against it” because he wanted to politicize the issue during the election campaign, Walz noted, insisting that neither Trump nor Vance are looking for real solutions to the problems they complain about so much. “What would Donald Trump be talking about if we actually did some of these things? And these are things that have to be done by the legislature, this cannot be done through the executive branch,” added the Democrat.
