How do you fix immigration? Which Republican presidential candidates are going hard right

At the second Republican presidential debate, Nikki Haley promised to send special operation forces into Mexico to combat drug cartels.

Vivek Ramaswamy vowed to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.

And Tim Scott used the debate's first question — about the United Auto Workers' strike — to pivot to immigration, saying “Joe Biden should not be on the picket line. He should be on the southern border.”

The candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are escalating their rhetoric on immigration, seeking to win support by tapping into GOP voters’ frustrations about Biden’s handling of the border.

It’s an issue that comes up at nearly every Iowa campaign stop.

Polling shows immigration is important to Iowa Republicans. An August Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll found 77% of likely Republican caucusgoers would be more likely to favor a candidate who calls for using the military to secure the southern border, while just 12% say they would be less likely to favor a candidate who took that stance.

Former President Donald Trump found success in his 2016 race by proposing controversial policies such as building a wall on the southern border and promising Mexico would pay for it (it didn't), as well as banning travel from Muslim-majority countries.

Almost all the candidates have followed Trump’s lead on immigration, endorsing his proposal to build a wall on the border with Mexico and vowing to reinstate Trump-era policies such as “Remain in Mexico” and Title 42, which would require immigrants to apply for asylum from outside the country and more easily expel migrants who enter the United States illegally.

More: Complete coverage of the Iowa Caucuses

Trump, who has a commanding lead in the polls for the Republican nomination, reiterated those themes during a recent visit to Dubuque and promised to go further by deploying thousands of active-duty military troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Before we defend the borders of foreign countries, we must secure the border of our country,” he told a cheering crowd in Dubuque.

Candidates propose using military force against drug cartels, prompting rebuke from Mexican president

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pledged U.S. military action on the border and in Mexico to disrupt drug cartels, groups he calls “akin to a terrorist organization” and “the worst of humanity.”

He’s said he would authorize U.S. agents to use lethal force against cartel members entering the country.

“If they are trying to break into our country with fentanyl that’s going to poison our people, that will be the last thing that they do,” DeSantis told a packed Pizza Ranch in Garner. “Because we’re going to shoot them stone-cold dead at the border.”

“Stone-cold dead” is a major applause line for the Florida governor — he’s used it in Iowa speeches, on the national debate stage and in early-state television ads.

At a restaurant in Coralville, more than 1,200 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, DeSantis was asked: “Would you be willing to use drones, whatever military it takes, to take out those cartels in Mexico?”

“Yes, I’ve already said that,” DeSantis said, standing on a small stage in a suit jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. “We will lean in against the drug cartels. We will absolutely reserve the right, if they’re invading our country and killing our people, we have the right to defend this country.”

During the GOP debate, Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, repeated her call to use special operations to kill cartel members in Mexico.

“It’s how we deal with our terrorists,” she said. “And what you need to do is understand that Mexico’s not being a good partner if we lost 75,000 Americans last year. Mexico’s not being a good partner if they’re letting the cartels get away with what they’re getting away with.”

Scott, a U.S. senator from South Carolina, has also promised to “unleash our military to crush the cartels.” At a campaign stop in July, he said he would “use every asset, every arrow in our quiver” against the cartels, although he has not specified what kind of military action he intends to take on Mexican territory.

Other candidates have ridiculed the idea of sending military troops into Mexico without the country’s consent, saying it amounts to an act of war.

Texas businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley told reporters at the Iowa State Fair that "putting the military on the border is not a real plan."

At the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual banquet in September, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson urged a more cooperative approach.

"They're a friend and country. We can't invade Mexico. We shouldn't invade Mexico," Hutchinson said. "But we've got to pressure them economically to work with us to enforce the rule of law."

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador urged Americans not to vote for DeSantis in July, citing the governor’s enactment of a harsh immigration law in Florida. López Obrador has also criticized Republican lawmakers who demanded military action against drug cartels in Mexico.

“We are not going to allow any foreign government to intervene and much less foreign armed forces to intervene in our territory,” he said at a news conference in March.

Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis echo Donald Trump's calls to end birthright citizenship

Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, consistently touts his support for U.S. military force on the southern border and the deportation of illegal immigrant families, including those who have U.S.-born children.

Under his administration, he says, families of undocumented immigrants — including U.S.-born children who are legally citizens — would be deported. It was an opinion he said he believed "most of the current Supreme Court" would accept.

"The 14^th Amendment and the framers of the 14^th Amendment never intended for someone to be entering this country illegally with the intention of establishing an anchor baby in this country after breaking the law, to actually create a new standard for citizenship," Ramaswamy said in Dubuque.

A "limited number" of immigrants who have "proven themselves to be law-abiding, truly contributing potential citizens" could have the opportunity to go through the legal immigration process, he said.

It’s a point he repeated on the debate stage.

“I favor ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegal immigrants in this country,” Ramaswamy said. “Now, the left will howl about the Constitution and the 14th Amendment. The difference between me and them is I’ve actually read the 14th Amendment.”

The 14th Amendment, passed in 1866 following the Civil War, guarantees that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

DeSantis has also said he would take action to end birthright citizenship, although experts say the effort would be unlikely to succeed. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship in an 1898 case, and the consensus among legal scholars is that it would take a constitutional amendment to overturn it.

Ramaswamy’s and DeSantis’ support for ending birthright citizenship echoes Trump, who first called for ending birthright citizenship during his 2015 campaign. During his presidency, he floated the idea of signing an executive order on the subject but never did so.

Trump renewed his stance in a video message in May, calling birthright citizenship “a reward for breaking the laws of the United States” and saying he would sign an executive order on the first day of his presidency so the children of undocumented immigrants “will not receive automatic citizenship.”

A few candidates vow to fix a 'broken immigration system'

When the candidates talk about immigration on the campaign trail, they focus the bulk of their remarks on border security.

Only a few have advocated passing reforms to the immigration system.

One of those is former Vice President Mike Pence, who told an Iowan in Cresco last month that he thinks the country should return to the kind of system that existed when his grandfather immigrated to the United States from Ireland in the 1920s.

“I think our immigration system should be based on people that want to come here and be Americans and work,” Pence said. “It’s called a merit-based immigration system, and I think it’s an idea whose time has come. And frankly, it’s not a new idea.”

Another of Pence’s proposals is for the government to work with private job search sites such as Monster.com to build a system for immigrants to apply for jobs in the United States from within their home countries. Then the government would conduct a background check and screening before the immigrant could enter the United States and work.

“You can secure the border quicker than you can possibly imagine,” Pence told the Iowan in Cresco. “But then fix that broken immigration system, which I promise we’ll do once and for all.”

Haley has said the immigration system is unfair to legal immigrants, forcing them to wait years, if ever, to be approved for entry. She wants immigrants to come to the United States on a merit system and to include businesses in need of workers as part of the process.

“Think farmers. Think construction. Think tourism,” she said on a recent trip to Grand Mound. “And let’s make sure that when they need workers, we bring them here and it’s done on merit so that builds up our economy. That’s the way you do it.”

She also wants to require businesses to use the E-Verify program to check the citizenship status of all new hires. Haley enacted a law to do so as governor of South Carolina and said she wants to implement the policy federally if elected president.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who has deployed North Dakota National Guard members to the border, also says the nation needs to improve its immigration laws.

“We’re fortunate that people want to come to our country. The best and the brightest still want to get here,” he said in July.

“Let's figure out a plan” so they can, he said, adding that Canada is recruiting highly skilled foreign-born workers in the U.S. whose visas are expiring.

“We’ve got 11 million jobs open in America," Burgum said. "We're hurting our economy. We’re hurting our long-term competitiveness by not being smart about this.”

Des Moines Register reporters Brianne Pfannenstiel, Katie Akin, Galen Bacharier, Amanda Tugade, William Morris, Philip Joens, Phillip Sitter, Virginia Barreda and Donnelle Eller contributed reporting to this article.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: 2024 GOP candidates veer hard right on immigration in Iowa campaigns