Former President Donald Trump‘s son, Donald Trump Jr., laid out a plan on Saturday to “stop” “election interference” by illegal immigrants, who some Republicans claim are committing voter fraud, and defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in November.
President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21 following weeks of interparty fighting among Democrats on whether he should pass the torch to the next generation after his debate fiasco against Trump in late June in Atlanta. Biden also endorsed Harris the day he withdrew from the race and she is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
In an op-ed published by Fox News on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr., a fierce supporter of his father, wrote that Democrats “have put America last, and non-citizens first, by opening our borders, dismantling election safeguards and embracing non-citizen voting.”
He continued: “We deserve a secure system where our future is decided by our citizens, not this anti-American version of the Democrats. Led by Vice President Kamala Harris, they have undermined our country at every turn, welcomed the invasion at the border and encouraged non-citizens to cancel the voice of Americans.”
Since Harris began campaigning for president, Republicans have attacked her for being soft on immigration. In 2021, Biden tasked Harris with leading the administration’s diplomacy with Central American countries—El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—to address the “root causes” of migration. However, she never was in charge of border security. While illegal immigration has gone up significantly under Biden, it also increased in Trump’s last months in office after hitting a low from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Democrats have a clear plan: allow law-breaking illegal aliens to overrun the border and remove barriers to the ballot box. This is election interference, and we must stop it,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote in Saturday’s op-ed. “Protecting Americans’ right to decide the future of our country is our top priority, and we’re doing everything possible to stop non-citizen voting. But the most important thing we can do is to send President Trump back to the White House.”
Newsweek reached out to Harris’ campaign for comment and Donald Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, for comment from Donald Trump Jr. on Saturday afternoon.
There is no evidence to back up claims that scores of illegal immigrants have voted in past elections or that the Democrats plan to garner illegitimate votes in the upcoming election. Research published by the Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 found that across 42 jurisdictions, among 23.5 million votes tabulated in the 2016 general elections, there were 30 incidents of suspected non-citizen voting—around 0.0001 percent.
Meanwhile, Trump currently faces four felony charges for allegedly attempting to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory in events that led to the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Trump has claimed without evidence that the election was stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud.
The former president is also facing 10 charges in Georgia for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. Meanwhile, over a dozen of Trump’s allies also face charges for the election plot in Georgia. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and claims the cases against him are politically motivated.
Plan to Stop Non-Citizen Voting
Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) have filed lawsuits in multiple states to combat non-citizen voting.
In New York City, they successfully challenged a local law that would have allowed over 800,000 non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. In June 2022, the New York Supreme Court ruled that such a law violated the state constitution.
Republicans also sued two Vermont cities, Montpelier and Winooski, for allowing legal residents who are not U.S. citizens to vote in municipal elections, but the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in January 2023 that this did not violate the state constitution.
They have also filed lawsuits pertaining to non-citizen voting in North Carolina and Arizona, two battleground states in the 2024 presidential election.
The SAVE Act Passes
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a Republican-led bill that would require those registering to vote to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. It is already illegal for noncitizens to register to vote or to vote in federal elections. Five Democrats joined 216 Republicans in passing the bill.
The bill’s passage followed GOP claims that Democrats wanted the surge of illegal immigrants crossing over the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years so that they could use them for votes in this year’s election.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, before the bill was passed, “Why are Democrats so adamantly against ensuring only American citizens vote in our elections? They want to turn illegal aliens into voters. We must pass the SAVE Act to prevent this.”
