Speaking with Spectrum News in Eau Claire, Wisc., on Tuesday, Ohio Sen. JD Vance said Wisconsinites are suffering because of Vice President Kamala Harris’ policies and said “foreigners” are taking the homes that “should, by rights, go to American citizens.”
He also continued to defend spreading what he described as “outlandish claims” about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating house pets. And he blamed the rhetoric of Harris and other Democrats for the apparent attempted assassination targeting former President Donald Trump while insisting the Republican presidential nominee has “every right to be a little angry” at his political foes as he ratchets up the tenor of his own rhetoric.
“Springfield's story is increasingly an American story where you have way too many migrants coming in,” Vance said before his rally on Tuesday night, blaming Harris and the Biden administration's border policies for such an influx. “And what it means in practice is a lot of social services are overwhelmed, lower public safety, rise in communicable diseases, certainly an increase in stress on the hospital services and the school services.”
Schools, hospitals and government buildings have had to shut down in recent days as more than 30 hoax bomb and shooting threats have targeted the city. Earlier on Tuesday, Vance argued that because many of the threats were originating from overseas, he and Trump shouldn’t be blamed despite many local officials, including Republicans, pointing to their comments as causing the chaos.
"They've tried to arrest him. They've tried to kick him off social media. They've tried to make it impossible for President Trump to actually get out there, speak his words and speak his message to the American people," Vance said in his interview with Spectrum News in Eau Claire. "Unfortunately, when you make censorship the heart of your campaign, some people take censorship to its logical conclusion, which is to silence a person completely with an assassin's bullet."
Vance conceded "the rhetoric in this country has gotten a little overheated" and encouraged "everybody to tamp down on it a little bit," though he continued to hammer Trump's opponents for alleged censorship and other lines of attack.
"But we have to remember that President Trump has taken two assassination attempts now in just the last two months. I think he has every right to be a little angry at some of the political leaders who, instead of debating his ideas, are going after him personally and trying to censor him," he added.
When pressed on his claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, Vance said immigrants were a drain on social services and to blame for rising housing prices. He told Spectrum News “we, of course, want to be welcoming to immigration, but legal immigrants and not illegal immigration.” The Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio, is in the country legally, according to the city government.
“When you let in millions of migrants, you actually have homes going to foreigners that should, by rights, go to American citizens. That puts huge stress on American citizens' ability to buy a home. It also drives up the cost of housing for American citizens,” Vance said. “We've been talking about this for months, and the American media largely ignored it, until some of the more outlandish claims from citizens in Springfield started to make their way to the top of the national conversation.”
“You cannot have a country where you drop in 20-25 million people who shouldn't be here. It puts a strain on everything and makes everybody poorer,” he continued.
While estimates vary and an exact number is difficult to determine, the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. is likely much lower than what Vance claimed. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, there were around 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. in 2022, which would still be less than the record-high 12.2 million estimated to live in the U.S. in 2005.
Crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have also fallen precipitously since the Biden administration took administrative action earlier this year, with numbers released on Tuesday showing that crossings in August were down by more than half of what they were in August 2023.
Vance also claimed Harris’ border and immigration policies are causing Wisconsinites to suffer from fentanyl overdoses and addiction. When pressed for solutions to the opioid crisis beyond Trump’s long-standing proposal to shut down the southern border, Vance said “you really do have to close the border” and then “promote treatment options out there.” He did not expand on how he would address “shortages of beds and treatment centers,” but argued “the first step of the path to recovery is surviving the addiction” and that stopping the flow of the potent fentanyl was priority number one.
The libertarian Cato Institute reported last year that 89% of convicted fentanyl traffickers in 2022 were U.S. citizens, and 93% of fentanyl seizures in the first half of 2023 “occurred at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes.”
“My own mother struggled with addiction for a big chunk of my early life, and thank God she got clean and she got a second chance,” Vance said. “But there are a lot of families across Wisconsin that aren't getting a second chance because fentanyl is so deadly and so dangerous. You've got to stop that stuff from coming into this state and this country in the first place.”
According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, “synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl,” were identified in 91% of opioid overdoses and 73% of all drug overdose deaths in the last year, with the number of fentanyl overdose deaths in Wisconsin growing by 97% from 651 in 2019 to 1,280 in 2021.
As he wrapped up his time with Spectrum News, Vance previewed the case he will make at his debate with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, in October.
“I think the biggest thing I want voters to take away is that as much as Kamala Harris has run from her record, she has pursued policies that have raised the price of groceries. She's pursued policies that have raised the cost of housing. She pursued policies that open the American southern border,” Vance said. “So the question for the American people is, do we want to promote a failed leader to President of the United States, or do we want to go to the policies of Donald Trump, which did deliver peace and prosperity and promised to do so again?”