Nikki Haley Plans to Halt Hiring of Illegal Immigrants with E-Verify Mandate if Elected

nikki haley
AP Photo/Charles Krupa
Nick Gilbertson

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley plans to enact a federal program requiring that employers use E-Verify to confirm workers’ employment eligibility, which she sees as a means to combat the unlawful hiring of illegal immigrants.

Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, detailed her immigration and border security platform on the campaign trail in New Hampshire on Tuesday. The candidate hosted back-to-back town hall events in Dover and Salem.

At both events, Haley highlighted her plans to mandate the E-Verify program on the federal level, hire 25,000 new U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees, and end “handouts” to illegal aliens, her campaign noted.

E-Verify is a government-run tool that allows employers to verify the employment eligibility of their workers. As governor of South Carolina, Haley enacted statewide E-Verify requirements for business on all new hires. The 2011 law, which is still on the books, mandates that employers verify new workers’ employment eligibility within three days.

Haley discussed her plans to bring such a program to the national stage while speaking with Breitbart News Washington Bureau chief Matthew Boyle during an exclusive interview following her campaign launch event in February.

“What we did in South Carolina with E-Verify was you had to verify that that person was in this country legally or else you could not hire them,” Haley said. “That’s what we put in place in South Carolina, and more importantly we enforced it. When you enforce it, one, that stops everybody from coming across the border. Two, it puts laws in place that matter. Americans need to get these jobs. We need Americans building things again. We need Americans working again. We don’t need to pay them to sit on the couch. We need to get them to work, but we have to have the jobs ready for them when we get them there.”

On Tuesday, Haley also detailed her vision to reverse plans to hire 87,000 new IRS agents as laid out in the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act boondoggle, which does not actually reduce inflation. Instead, she vows to hire tens of thousands of CBP and ICE employees.

“When I’m president, we’re going to stop catch-and-release, and we’re going to start catch-and-deport,” Haley told the audience in Salem, WMUR reported.

Haley chats with Granite Staters over a pint after a town hall at the Derry-Salem Elks Lodge. (Nikki Haley for President)

Additionally, Haley plans to stop using federal tax dollars to fund handouts for illegal immigrants, including carveouts established by liberal states for illegal migrants through federal pandemic relief funds, as well as billions in federal funds that flow into Democrat-run sanctuary cities.

“Billions of dollars have been paid to illegal immigrants. That’s got to stop,” Haley told WMUR during an interview Tuesday. “Let’s defund sanctuary cities once and for all and make sure we don’t go back to that.”

In an op-ed published in the National Review ahead of her events, Haley zoned in on the fentanyl epidemic killing tens of thousands of Americans annually. She asserted that sanctuary cities perpetuate the problem and pointed specifically to Lawrence, Massachusetts, a small city of some 88,000 people just south of the New Hampshire border, as an example:

Lawrence is like a lot of towns in the region. The factories closed a long time ago. Then a new kind of business sprang up: the kind that traffics illegal drugs. In 2018, law enforcement in New Hampshire traced a drug bust to Lawrence, leading to 45 indictments and the seizure of 30 kilograms of fentanyl. It was their largest drug bust at the time. Yet the flow of dangerous and illegal drugs kept coming. No wonder: Lawrence is a sanctuary city that blocks federal immigration law enforcement from doing its job.

New Hampshire families are reeling from fentanyl. More than 400 people have died from drug overdoses in New Hampshire almost every year for the past decade. In 2022, that number was 434 people — and two-thirds died from fentanyl. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s far from over. Many more men, women, and children have been exposed to this deadly drug. Even now, dealers are pedaling it across the state.

…

The fentanyl that goes through towns such as Lawrence into states such as New Hampshire overwhelmingly comes from China and Mexico. Chemicals are manufactured in China, then sent to Mexico. Mexico mass-produces liquid fentanyl and fentanyl powder that’s mixed into fake prescription drugs. Drug cartels push the fentanyl across the border and sell their goods to drug traffickers. From there, it makes its way to our families and friends.

Haley is traveling to the Southern border next week with visits to San Antonio and Eagle Pass, Texas, with Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX).

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