Republican 2024 presidential hopeful Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that he will enact sweeping immigration reforms including bringing birthright citizenship to an end.
"We will take action to end the idea that the children of illegal aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship if they are born in the United States," The Hill reported DeSantis saying to reporters in Texas on Monday as he unveiled his "No Excuses" immigration plan that echoes what former President Donald Trump campaigned on in 2016. "Dangling the prize of citizenship to the future offspring of illegal immigrants is a major driver of illegal migration. It is also inconsistent with the original understanding of 14th Amendment, and we will force the courts and Congress to finally address this failed policy."
DeSantis, who is running well behind Trump for the GOP nomination in the race, described his plan during a stop in the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday.
The Washington Post reported that DeSantis' plan to restrict illegal immigration would also finish the border wall Trump started and continue the former president's policy of keeping asylum seekers in Mexico while their cases are pending.
While much of the plan is the same as Trump's border policy, DeSantis said his would have greater "follow through," according to the report.
"I have listened to people in D.C. for years and years and years … Republicans and Democrats always chirping about this and yet never actually bringing the issue to a conclusion," the Post reported DeSantis saying. "We don't want hollow rhetoric."
Trump's campaign said in the report that DeSantis was simply "copying and pasting" Trump's policy on illegal immigration as his own, and Trump took to his Truth Social account to amplify that notion.
"DeSanctimonious showed up today in Eagle Pass, on the Texas Border, with almost no crowd or excitement," Trump posted on the social media account Monday. "He is a failed candidate, whose sole purpose in making the trip was to reiterate the fact that he would do all of the things done by me in creating the strongest border, by far, in U.S. history. A total waste of time!"
The Associated Press reported that the plan would also use military troops to quash the drug cartels at the southern border and "reserve the right to operate across the border to secure our territory from Mexican cartel activities."
"We will use every bit of leverage at our disposal against both Mexico and every power at our disposal against the cartels," the AP reported DeSantis telling his audience in Eagle Pass. "If they are trying to move product into this country and they are killing our people, you don't only have the right, you have a responsibility to fight back."