Vance criticizes Biden administration’s border policies during campaign stop in Milwaukee

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance of the Milwaukee Police Association said today that southern border policies under the Biden-Harris administration “are making our communities less safe, even as far north as Wisconsin.”

“It means Mexican drug cartels are operating in our communities,” Vance said. “It means people are dying from fentanyl.”

Vance again blamed Biden-Harris’ border policies for the nation’s scarce municipal resources, saying millions of dollars are being spent on “housing, sheltering, and medical care for people who shouldn’t be here.”

“These are the people who came through Kamala Harris’ wide-open southern border,” Vance said. “When you take millions of dollars that should be going to our local police departments and you put it into sheltering and providing medical care to illegal aliens, it’s the least in our community, the least of these in our communities, who suffer the most.”

Vance acknowledged that his wife, Usha Vance, is the daughter of South Asian immigrants and said he supports immigration policies that promote assimilation into American culture rather than recent policies that he said allow “25 million illegal aliens to settle here with no vetting, no enforcement and no real ability to monitor what happens.”

Vance, answering questions from reporters, defended Trump’s comments yesterday that the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, is “far superior” to the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration. Trump was referring to Miriam Adelson, a GOP donor to whom he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.

“This is a man who loves our veterans and honors our veterans,” Vance said. “I don’t think his compliments and kind words about a person who has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in any way denigrates those who have received military honors. They are two different awards and I think the president said nice things about a person he liked, and that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”

Vance said Trump supports a law enforcement policy that only supports “the people who actually keep us safe.” The Milwaukee Police Association endorsed the Trump and Vance ticket at the event, saying they will best address the challenges facing Milwaukee’s policing.

Before Vance’s speech, former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was on duty during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, held a press conference with local and law enforcement officials in Milwaukee. They discussed Trump’s record on violent crime and his support for pardoning Americans arrested for their actions on Jan. 6.

Dunn called Vance’s visit to the Milwaukee Police Association “ironic.”

“It’s kind of ironic that he’s working with police officers when he’s the running mate of a man who’s been convicted of 34 felonies,” Dunn said. “As a former police officer with over 15 years of experience, I feel like Donald Trump and JD Vance are exploiting (the police officers) and using them for their own personal gain. Because they’ve shown that they want to defund the police and they don’t want to support them.”

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley criticized the rise in crime under Trump at the news conference and said voters would pay “a high price” under Trump.

“But if we want to continue to lower crime rates, if we want to continue to work to protect our families and friends from gun violence, if we want to continue to protect our democracy, one thing is clear, and that is we need to send Vice President Harris and Governor Walz to the White House,” Crowley said.

It was Vance’s second trip to Wisconsin since he was formally nominated for vice president at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month. He visited Eau Claire last week on the same day as Harris and Walz.

Watch the video of Vance’s speech.