Trump Takes Aim at Legal Immigration

Former President Donald J. Trump, who is seeking re-election on the same hard line against undocumented immigrants that helped carry him to power in 2016, has said he is not opposed to legal immigration into the United States.

But remarks this week by the former president and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, signal that a second Trump administration would again aim to curb the legal channels that allow people to enter the country or obtain protection from deportation once inside its borders.

In an interview with NewsNation on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump said he would revoke a program that allows tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants to live in the country legally.

The statement came as Mr. Trump has disparaged a Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, and falsely accused people there of killing and eating pets. At the vice-presidential debate a day earlier, Mr. Vance suggested that a Trump White House would also eliminate a program that allows undocumented immigrants to apply for asylum once they are in immigration proceedings in the United States.

The program allows migrants to use an app to secure legal status “at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand,” Mr. Vance said.

Biden administration officials and immigration lawyers argue that the initiatives help provide orderly pathways into the country at a time when global migration has hit record high levels and U.S. immigration officers have grappled with large numbers of people arriving at the nation’s southern border.