By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor
(The Center Square) – Former president Donald Trump said his top priority if elected president would be closing the U.S. border with Mexico.
Trump made the comments in an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired Wednesday night on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the same night that GOP candidates took the stage for the first debate of the presidential primaries. Trump, the Republican frontrunner by far according to The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, decided to skip the debate because of his wide lead.
“If you’re elected president again, what’s your number one priority?” Carlson asked. “When you ran the last time, you ran on building the wall. This time your bottom-line top promise to the country.”
Trump said he’d focus on numerous things at the same time, but the border was the priority. Without hesitation, he said, “the border, and taking hundreds of thousands of criminals that have been allowed into our country and bringing them back to their country.”
Last month, people came in from 149 countries “from places many people have never heard of coming into our country,” Trump said. “They are coming in from mental institutions, they are coming from prisons. They are emptying their prisons from all over South America. They are emptying out their mental institutions. Terrorists are pouring in and we have no idea [who they are].”
The former president said he “had the strongest border in the history of our country. I built almost 500 miles of wall. I had another 200 to build. We built it, all they had to do was install it,” he continued, referring to the Biden administration, which instead halted construction of the wall on President Joe Biden’s first day in office.
Trump made the pledge to secure the border after more than 8.6 million people illegally entered since January 2021.
Arrests of noncitizens with criminal convictions at the southwest border are also at record highs. If the current trajectory continues, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations agents are on track this fiscal year to arrest the greatest number of illegal foreign nationals with criminal convictions in recorded history.
In addition to these apprehensions, ICE agents are continuing to arrest violent criminals. Recent arrests include an MS-13 gang member on El Salvador’s Top 100 list and a Brazilian military officer involved in a 2015 massacre.
In fiscal 2022, ICE ERO agents arrested 46,396 noncitizens with criminal histories, including 198,498 associated charges and convictions for 21,531 assault offenses; 8,164 sex and sexual assault offenses; 5,554 weapons offenses; 1,501 homicide-related offenses; and 1,114 kidnapping offenses.
Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations agents in the first nine months of fiscal 2023 have also apprehended more known or suspected terrorists than they did in all of fiscal 2022. They apprehended 525 known or suspected terrorists at the northern and southwest borders this fiscal year compared to 478 last fiscal year.
These numbers don’t include known or suspected terrorists who illegally entered the U.S. but evaded capture, referred to as “gotaways” by Customs and Border Patrol. Gotaways total at least nearly 1.6 million since January 2021, according to an analysis by The Center Square.
Over two years ago, Trump warned that Central and South American countries would open their prisons and flood the U.S. with criminals. At a border security event with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, he said that under his administration, federal law enforcement officials halted much illegal activity along the border as a result of deals he made with Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
As a result of Trump’s agreements, criminals from these countries were prohibited from entering the U.S. or the four countries would stop receiving funding from the federal government.
Under the Obama administration when MS13 and other criminals were deported, their home countries wouldn’t take them back, he added.
“For years, these countries wouldn’t take them back,” Trump said, which is one reason why he stopped sending them funding. Then he got calls from their leaders, who said, “Sir, you’re not paying us anymore.’ And I said, ‘That’s right.’”
“They said, ‘Sir, we would love to have MS13 back in our country. We think they are wonderful people,’” Trump said.
“And we were bringing them in by the thousands, getting them out. And now they’re sending them back because what they are doing is they are opening their prisons and prisoners, murderers, human traffickers, all of these people, drug dealers, they’re coming in through the caravans, not everybody, but are coming in illegally,” he added.
Trump told Carlson that he’d “seal up the border good and tight except for the people who want to come in legally.”