JD Vance Talks Illegal Immigration, Drugs In Visit To Milwaukee Police Union
Vance uses campaign stop to rail against illegal immigration and Kamala Harris.
J.D. Vance Delivers His Vice Presidency Nomination Acceptance Speech. Photo by Jeramey Jannene
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance made a campaign stop at the Milwaukee Police Association (MPA) office Friday morning, delivering a brief speech touching on public safety and illegal immigration, and accepting an endorsement from the police association.
Vance used the stop Friday to campaign on public safety issues, expressing support for law enforcement and blaming the policies of the Biden administration for drug overdose deaths and drug cartel activity. But the primary issue he tied everything back to was illegal immigration.
“We’ve got to cut out with the anti-law enforcement craziness,” Vance said. “We’ve got to cut out with some of the policies that have come from the Harris administration that make it harder for the police to do their job.”
With President Joe Biden out of the race, Vance trained his criticism squarely on Kamala Harris, frequently referring to the “Harris Administration.” He went after the vice president’s prosecutorial record during her time as San Francisco District Attorney. “If you look at Kamala Harris’s record as a prosecutor, it is the opposite of tough on crime.”
In his speech, Vance repeatedly attempted to connect public safety issues like drug overdose deaths and drug cartels to illegal immigration and Harris. Biden appointed Harris to lead a response to migration at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Vance said the U.S. is spending “millions of dollars housing, sheltering and providing medical care for people who shouldn’t be here” that should “go to our local police departments, and you put it in sheltering and providing medical care for illegal aliens.”
The Ohio senator was asked about a statement he made attributing previous waves of Italian, Irish and German immigration to higher crime and conflict in American society. He responded saying “there were a lot of benefits” to those waves of immigration, adding, “But has anybody ever seen the movie Gangs of New York? That’s what I’m talking about.
We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates,” he said. “What we want is an American immigration policy that promotes assimilation, that no matter where you come from, you can become an American.”
After holding a roundtable with Wisconsin law enforcement officials, Vance said one sheriff told him “he has Mexican drug cartel members who have been doing business selling drugs and harming the citizens of his community.”
Vance once again connected this to immigration and the border.
“So the border policies that we have at the southern border, they make our communities less safe, even as far north as Wisconsin, it means Mexican drug cartels operating in our communities. It means people dying of fentanyl.”
The senator said fentanyl has become so widespread it’s showing up “in our marijuana bags that our teenagers are using.” He blamed the vice president. “American teenager mistakes have become death sentences because Kamala Harris refuses to do her job.”
Vance said overdose deaths went down under Trump, who made the opioid crisis an issue during his first run for the presidency. The annual rate of opioid-related overdose deaths increased during Trump’s time in office, and continued going up after he left, according to data from the National Institutes of Health.
“The fentanyl crisis really, really took off under the leadership of Kamala Harris, under the border czar policies, where she opened up the southern border, where fentanyl got completely out of control,” Vance said. “And you talk to our law enforcement officers, and they will tell you that the fentanyl problem has gotten way worse in the last few years than it was at any previous time under any previous administration, Democrat or Republican.”
In Milwaukee, fentanyl deaths started trending upward in 2015. By 2016, they surpassed heroin as the primary cause of overdose deaths, and by 2020, the final year of Trump’s first term, three out of four overdose deaths in Milwaukee were due to fentanyl. In Milwaukee, fentanyl remains a critical public health problem, where the drug is involved in more than 90% of overdose deaths.
MPA Endorsement
MPA President Alexander Ayala presented Vance with the police association’s official endorsement.
Ayala rattled off a number of issues that he said are challenging policing in Milwaukee, including “rushes to judgment in officer-involved shootings,” low bail for violent offenders, low officer morale and a staffing crisis necessitating frequent use of overtime.
“The Milwaukee Police Association believes that the solution to these challenges can be found right here,” Ayala said. “That’s why the MPA is endorsing the Presidential ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance, because addressing these issues isn’t as political; It’s truly a matter of life and death to Milwaukee.”
Vance was asked to respond to criticisms of his decision to campaign at the police association headquarters, 6310 W. Blue Mound Rd., given Trump’s felony conviction and his positive comments about Jan. 6th rioters. “I think that Kamala Harris has weaponized the Department of Justice,” Vance said, “not just against my running mate, not just against President Trump, but against a whole host of normal Americans for just exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Former MPA President Andrew Wagner also spoke Friday, blaming declining Milwaukee Police Department staffing for homicide rates. Wagner also praised Trump’s decision to send federal law enforcement to Kenosha in response to rioting in 2020.
“He made sure that somebody had the officers back,” Wagner said. “And I can’t be more supportive of this administration and President Trump, because I know we have a partner in him, and I know he will always have our back.”
It was Vance’s first visit to Milwaukee since the Republican National Convention in July.
JD and Usha Vance enter Milwaukee Police Association endorsement event. Photo by Graham Kilmer.
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Vance supports this legacy of death and destruction by his candidacy on the Trump-Vance ticket, including the beating of law enforcement officers and their deaths from January 6, 2021, as well as the felonies Donald Trump has committed and other criminal charges he still faces.
JD Vance shouldn’t be dismissed as just a weird and immature guy that Trump picked as VP to blindly echo and sing his praise. However inept, Vance (tries to) advance Trump’s grim message.
Donald Trump advocated for overturning our government on January 6, 2021 as the US Congress completed work counting electoral college votes from the 2020 elections at the US Capitol. As a result of the attack Trump inspired, five people died within 36 hours, 174 police officers were injured, and four law enforcement officers latter died tragically by suicide within seven months.
Vance has promoted the “great replacement theory,” a discredited theory used to justify racist policies. Vance has praised Project 2025, devised by The Heritage Foundation, which welcomed RNC visitors to Milwaukee with a prominent sign in the MKE airport, supports many of Vance’s (and Trump’s) beliefs and is ready with a plan to replace our representative Democracy with a partisan state.
Wisconsin voters must realize that the Trump-Vance ticket threatens our constitution and rule of law. Vance is not just some harmless weirdo, but on the ballot to make that destruction real.
Hopefully they can help repair the damage of the past 4 years under the biden/harris administration
Vance is nothing more than another MAGA-lomaniac who has turned 180 degrees on many of his positions, who has sold his soul for the singular purpose of gaining personal power and fortune by espousing the “beliefs” of a man convicted of sexual assault, falsifying business records for paying off a pornstar with whom he had an affair while married to protect his “image” prior to the 2016 election. Vance stands along side of the guy who still faces charges in a federal election interference case, the Georgia federal interference case, and the classified document case. If that isn’t enough, he wants to be part of a team led by a man that has a proven track record of misogyny, racism, a lack of respect for the Constitution and the rule of law, who shows great reverence to authoritarian dictators elsewhere in the world, is incredibly narcissistic, egotistical, childish, and cares nothing about anyone in this country, other than to get their vote.
Seems like they might be cut from the same cloth, as both scream nothing more than how the US is going to hell in a hand basket, and only they can fix it.
On the other side we have candidates that say enough of that dire, apocalyptic view of our country. Their position is that WE aren’t going back, and they are making the attempt to create a sense of hope and joy by saying WE are in this fight together, and WE will make things better as a nation.
“We’ve got to cut out with the anti-law enforcement craziness,” Vance said.
Yea, and lets start by finally throwing lifelong criminal”the orange menace” in jail. What does it say that the MKE police find it fitting to endorse these corrupt clowns. Law and order my arse!
Many police object to the often conceived image of them as an authoritarian thugs who do not believe in the rights of individuals. When police unions and sheriffs routinely endorse the most extreme of right wing politicians, they reenforce this image.
The “Harris Administration”? JD is getting ahead of himself.
Mingus is right on the money. As a former MPD officer I can attest to the fact that a considerable percentage of the rank and file officers hold opinions that differ greatly from those expressed by their union’s leadership. It is a common mistake to assume that any group is monolithic in its thinking. So, the irony of the police union endorsing a convicted felon should not be taken as an indictment of all its members. I only hope those officers who disagree with union leadership will have the courage to speak out.
I’m curious when speaking about felons above…. does this mean you believe citizens that commit a crime and then serve out their punishment or pay their fines – that they are to be castaways in our society for the remainder of their life, unfit for work or service at a higher level?
What’s the point of even working hard to turn your life around if you’ll be treated as a 2nd class citizen forever?
I’m also curious when specifically referring to politicians…. how much more weight you place on being convicted vs simply committing a felony? Because numerous politicians & govt officials in both parties, and at the highest levels, have committed felonies, but due to being part of the Political Class no serious charges are brought, or they plead guilty to a washed down misdemeanor.
Wardt01 –
I absolutely do not believe that citizens that commit crimes and serve their punishment or pay their fines should be castaways in our society for the remainder of their lives. But please don’t try to equate the people to whom you are very generally referring to Frump. Not only has he not served any time, he hasn’t even been sentenced in his business fraud/pornstar case. He still has other cases pending that have not been tried as of yet.
I am not presuming guilt in those cases, but when I look at people that want my vote for ANY office, the first thing I look at is their character. I look for things in their background that show consistency, integrity, truthfulness and their willingness and ability to lead. True leaders do not have this much smoke around them, and when there is this much smoke there’s fire, or there damn well will be very soon.
A huge amount of that smoke originates directly from Frump and his lawyers, who have chosen to just utilize deny and delay circus performance defense tactics in the trials that have already concluded, in the hopes that none of those trials would begin before the election. In the trials that have already concluded, there has been no admission of guilt, no sense of remorse. To the contrary, all we have heard is that the radial left, especially Crooked Joe Biden, has weaponized the justice system against him, proving to me that Frump will always believe that everything he does is right, and nobody, including those whose jobs it is to enforce laws that apply equally to everyone in this country, can tell him he is wrong. He is such an egotistical sociopath that he will always portray himself as a victim when necessary. And this is the guy leading the supposed “law and order” Republican party. If he was as smart as he tells everyone he is (and as often as he can) and he had nothing to hide, he would have insisted that all of these trials be concluded before the election in order to clear the air for voters still on the fence with their votes.
So when it comes down to who will get my vote, I will choose someone who isn’t a few months away from a possible dumpster fire of his own making.