The Border Patrol Union formally endorsed Donald Trump in the presidential race on Sunday, saying its 16,000 members "strongly support" the Republican candidate.
On behalf of the 16,000 men and women represented by the National Border Patrol Council, we strongly support and endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States.
— Border Patrol Union - NBPC (@BPUnion) October 14, 2024
The endorsement was announced during a rally in Prescott, Arizona. "It's a great honor," Trump said. "They said it was unanimous. Thousands of people."
Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, then stepped onto the stage to warn that "if we allow border czar Harris to win this election, every city, every community in this great country is going to go to hell."
"The untold millions of people unvetted, who she has allowed into this country that are committing murders, rapes, robberies, burglaries and every other crime will continue to put our country in peril," he added.
Perez went on to say that "only Trump can fix that" because he has "always stood with the men and women who protect this border, who put their lives on the line for the country."
During the same rally, Trump vowed to request Congress a 10% increase in the amount of Border Patrol agents and give current members a 10% salary increase.
The former president added the proposal would comprise adding 10,000 new agents and $10,000 for retention and signing bonuses, a senior adviser to Trump said.
Trump's comments Sunday came months after he blocked a bipartisan plan that included hiring more agents. Earlier this year, Trump had opposed a bipartisan border security bill that was one of the toughest in decades, as it aimed to reduce border crossings and make asylum rules stricter.
After months of talks between Senate Democrats, Republicans and the Biden administration, the bill also included funding to hire 1,500 more border agents and 1,600 asylum officers. However, Senate Republicans blocked the bill after Trump pressured them to stop any plan that wasn't "perfect."
Trump has made of immigration a center point of his campaign, vowing to conduct mass deportations if elected.
"They come from the dungeons of the third world ... and she (Harris) has had them resettled beautiful into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens," he said at a rally in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday.
Aurora, a city of about 400,000, gained national attention after Trump amplified stories of gang activity involving the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua. Although local officials, including the city's Republican mayor, have rejected claims that Aurora is overrun by migrants, Trump emphasized what he described as rising dangers linked to immigration.
"They brought in 32,000 people into a community of 50 (thousand), a community that was a nice community," he elaborated. "And now if you want to go to the hospital you can't get in, your children can't get into school." He then added that illegal migrants "have to go back to where they came from."
Later on in the rally, Trump announced "Operation Aurora," a plan to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and deport undocumented migrants involved in gang activities. To achieve that, he pledged that "elite squads" from federal agencies like Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would actively pursue and remove such individuals from the U.S. through raids:
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