Exclusive: Republican Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley Envisions ‘Catch and Deport’ Illegal Immigration Policy

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley detailed on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday her policy vision to immediately begin deporting immigrants who are caught illegally entering the United States.

Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump Administration, spoke with host Matthew Boyle about the trip she took on Monday along the Southwest border in Texas, as well as her policy platform surrounding illegal immigration.

She emphasized that the current system of “catch and release” under President Joe Biden must be ended in favor of a “catch and deport” policy as one facet of her broader vision to combat illegal immigration.

“So currently when Border Patrol gets these illegal immigrants, they go, and they make sure that they write down who they are, where they’re going, all that, and then they release them to wherever they’re going to go, and they give them a court date,” Haley said. “In some cases, the court date may be two years from now. It may be three years from now. They may or may not show up to the court date.”

“What we need to do is when you catch them, you deport them back from where they came,” she added. “You can’t allow them in this country. My parents always said, ‘If someone doesn’t follow the law to come into this country, they won’t follow the law when they get into this country.’ We have got to stop the bleeding.”

Biden’s border fence won’t stop anybody. pic.twitter.com/vdF5XGq6MO

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 3, 2023

During her border visit, which included stops in Hondo, El Paso, and Eagle Pass, Haley spoke with a sheriff, whom she said identified the implementation of “catch and release” as the “trigger point” for chaos at the border.

LISTEN:

“He said, ‘It was like the floodgates opened up,'” Haley recounted.

“And so that’s the first stop that we have to do–is to stop that catch and release, and let all of these illegal immigrants know, when you come into this country illegally, you’re going to be deported immediately. That’s the biggest deterrent we can do to make sure they understand,” she added.

Accompanying her vision for “catch and deport” are plans to implement E-Verify requirements nationally for businesses to prevent them from hiring illegal aliens at low wages rather than American workers.

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 told Boyle that prior to the law, which “got [illegal immigrants] out of South Carolina,” many businesses in the Palmetto State, “whether they needed workers or they found it to be cheap labor … were hiring them.”

She emphasized that E-Verify “puts the business on the hook that if they hire somebody illegally, they get punished for that, and it’s considered a crime. So they pay a punishment, they pay a penalty, and get written up. … When you go and you put the businesses on the hook, then all of a sudden there’s another qualifier that keeps illegal immigrants from coming in.”

The former governor also shared a plan to end taxpayer-funded handouts to illegal immigrants while simultaneously cutting off federal funding to Democrat-run sanctuary cities.

“We have given billions of dollars to illegal immigrants, and that has to stop once and for all,” she said.

Moreover, Haley called for the revival of former President Donald Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy and for the preservation of Title 42, noting that if it ends in May, “then we’re in a world of hurt.”

FLASHBACK — Cuellar: ‘Catch and Release’ Isn’t Working

(Cuellar’s comments begin at 3:00.)