‘I Want Some Detail!’ ABC’s Raddatz Grills Trump Ally On Specific Plans For Military At Border

ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz pressed Trump ally Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), repeatedly demanding “details” on President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to use the military at the border.

Trump and his team have made clear that carrying out mass deportations will be a top priority when he assumes office in January.

On Sunday’s edition of ABC’s This Week, Raddatz grilled Donalds on the plan, and confronted him over the cost of mass deportations:

RADDATZ: Well, let’s talk about how he’s going to do it. He says he’s going to declare a national emergency and use military assets to execute his mass deportation plan. What does that look like?

DONALDS: Well, first and foremost, we’ve been very clear throughout the entire campaign that the first order of business is going to be removing, repatriating these criminal illegal aliens almost to the tune of a million of them back to their home countries. That is step one. Step two, we already talked about making sure that our borders whether it’s at —

(CROSSTALK)

RADDATZ: But how do you do that? I want some detail there.

DONALDS: Or in — or in the illegal points that they’re not allowed to come through. Say that again? I’m sorry.

RADDATZ: Give me some detail there. How are they going to do this? What’s the military going to do?

DONALDS: Well, first of all, when you’re talking about military assets being used, that’s only in a — in an extreme last resort. There are more than 6,000 officers who have been — who have dedicated their lives to having to remove illegal aliens from our country, people who already have a legal deportation order but they haven’t — it hasn’t been effectuated by Joe Biden.

What Donald Trump is going to do, we’re going to repatriate those people using those personnel at ICE and other parts of the — of the Department of Homeland Security to remove them. I think if you’re going to use military assets, that’s in the last resorts but that’s only for logistical purposes, Martha.

So I think that what we have to be very careful of is not to try to throw out this idea that you’re going to have troops in the United States going door to door. That is not going to happen.

RADDATZ: A recent analysis found it would cost about $315 billion and take at least 10 years to deport everyone in the U.S. without legal status. You often talk about the need to cut government spending. So how is this mass deportation going to be paid for?

DONALDS: Well, but, Martha, I will tell you what we already know is, is that the cost of massive illegal immigration to the federal government, to state governments and to local governments is more than $150 billion per year. So if you’re going to say that it cost us $300 billion over a decade to repatriate illegal aliens to their home country versus the American taxpayer having to pay more than a trillion dollars over the same decade to keep those illegal aliens in the United States, that is a savings to the American people.

And so it is important that, yes, we are going to have to use resources to repatriate these people back to their countries where they belong but it pales in comparison to the costs of massive illegal immigration in the United States, not just with trying to subsidize people living here, but it’s also the crime that has occurred.

Watch above via ABC’s This Week.