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Vice President JD Vance is doubling down on his "pack your bags" ultimatum to undocumented immigrants, a signature line he first deployed on the 2024 campaign trail that now carries the full weight of executive enforcement behind it.
- Congress turbo-charged ICE's capacity by signing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025, injecting a $75 billion supplement into the agency and funding a push to hire 10,000 additional officers to meet an annual deportation target of one million people.
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While the administration frames enforcement as public-safety-driven — prioritizing those with violent criminal records — elected officials in Los Angeles, advocates, and local residents have disputed that framing and condemned the raids as reckless and harmful to immigrant communities.
Vice President JD Vance has made it plain, again, that people living in the United States without legal authorization would be far better off leaving on their own terms than waiting for federal agents to find them. The warning is a cornerstone of his political identity dating back to 2024 — but it carries entirely different weight now that he speaks not as a Senate candidate but as the sitting vice president overseeing an enforcement machine that has grown to a scale previously unimaginable for a single law enforcement agency.
