Vance quotes 2002 Scorsese film to defend mass deportations

Vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance continues to argue that ethnic neighborhoods are a source of crime, basing his conclusion on a 2002 Martin Scorsese film.

Vance was asked during a campaign appearance Friday about past statements in which he defended the need for mass deportations because of the kind of criminal activity depicted in the film “Gangs of New York,” about 19th century New York City.

“Has anybody seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York?'” Vance said during an appearance at the Milwaukee Police Association. “That’s what I’m talking about, with these ethnic enclaves in our country, it can lead to higher crime rates.”

The Ohio senator was attempting to defend former President Donald Trump’s call for mass deportations to remove non-citizens from the country, a central part of his presidential campaign.

Vance was asked by a reporter whether mass deportations would address crime, apparently referring to comments he made in a 2021 interview about “ethnic enclaves.”

“You had this huge wave of Italian, Irish, German immigration, right? And that had its problems, its consequences,” Vance said in a 2021 interview when he was running for Senate. “You had higher crime rates, you had these ethnic enclaves, you had interethnic conflict.”

At the Milwaukee event, he returned to that theme, referencing the 2002 film about an Irish man who returns to New York to kill his father’s murderer, the leader of a gang that believes America should belong to the American-born and opposes immigration.

“What happens when you have massive amounts of illegal immigration,” Vance said. “It actually starts to create ethnic conflict. It creates higher crime rates. We’ve certainly seen that over the last few years. And I want to stop that.”