Mike Johnson among House Republicans to visit US-Mexico border in push for immigration crackdown – US politics live | US immigrationthedigitalchaps

On the campaign trail, the three leading contenders for the GOP’s presidential nomination have all pledged significant and draconian changes to US immigration policy if elected.

Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador who is polling at second place in recent surveys, pledged to “close the border”, send special forces to Mexico to fight cartels, and reinstitute a policy to force asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their applications are processed, which had been in effect during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has embraced similar policies, while also calling to end the automatic granting of citizenship to people born in the United States and authorize the summary execution of drug dealers crossing from Mexico, which is illegal:

Some of the most alarming rhetoric has come from Trump, who said last month that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”. As president, he instituted policies to separate migrant children from their parents, which many consider a human rights abuse. His latest comment drew widespread condemnation – including from Haley, who called it “harmful and unnecessary,” according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. The GOP has made keeping immigrants out of the United States a key plank of their platform, and today, around 60 House Republicans, including speaker Mike Johnson, will visit the border in Texas to make the case for a crackdown. Such trips have become routine for Republican lawmakers throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, and for the party’s presidential contenders, who have been selling voters on various ways to bar asylum seekers and others from the country, but today’s trip comes at a significant moment. The GOP has made passing stricter rules to curb the large numbers of migrants crossing into the country from Mexico its price to support military assistance to Israel and Ukraine, though the latter faces far more opposition on the right than the former.

Immigration policy is a famously difficult issue to find agreement on in Washington DC, but a small bipartisan group of senators has been negotiating for weeks to try to find a deal that will be acceptable to both parties. We’ll see if there’s any news about that today, while we also expect to hear from Johnson at 3.30pm eastern time, when he is scheduled to hold a press conference.

Here’s what else is going on today:

• Tom Emmer, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, endorsed Donald Trump for president, a day after his superior Steve Scalise did the same.

• With less than two weeks remaining before the Iowa Republican caucuses, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said she raised $24m in the fourth quarter of 2023, more than double her previous quarterly record. Some polls have lately shown her in a distant second-place to Trump.

• Karine Jean-Pierre will hold the first White House press briefing of the year at 2pm, alongside national security council spokesman John Kirby.