On Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence supported Georgia gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp in the GOP primary race. You may remember Kemp for his ad boasting that he had a big truck in case he had to “round up some criminal illegals and take ’em home myself.”
President Donald Trump took to Twitter last week to express his support for Kemp. He tweeted, “Brian is tough on crime, strong on the border and illegal immigration.”
Pence told the crowd in Macon, Georgia, on Saturday, “Brian Kemp will bring the kind of leadership to the Statehouse that President Donald Trump has brought to the White House.”
Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, is running against Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in the GOP primary. Cagle said, in a tape released by Kemp, “This primary felt like it was who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest.” If Kemp wins, he would face Democrat Stacey Abrams.
Kemp released a “track and deport” plan in March. He would create a new database that would aggregate information from state, local, and federal enforcement. The database would track arrests and convictions of undocumented people, give it to local law enforcement, prosecutors, and the courts and publish it on the Georgia Crime Information Center website, according to the Atlanta-Journal-Constitution. His plan would also mandate that law enforcement take undocumented people to a federal detention center for deportation, since state law does not require that Georgia law enforcement do this.
On his website, Kemp published a statement on sanctuary cities, expressing support for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s bill that would impose penalties on law enforcement if they refuse to comply with federal detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Detainer requests ask for local law enforcement to detain someone for 48 additional hours after their release from jail.
Kemp in his statement called sanctuary cities “dangerous”:
“Sanctuary cities are dangerous, unlawful, and defy our Georgia values. As governor, our state will respect the rule of law and put the well being of Georgians – not illegal immigrants – first. Like Texas Governor Greg Abbott, I will fight radical, left-wing organizations and activists who are more concerned with advancing their agenda than keeping citizens and communities safe.”
In Clayton County, Georgia, the county sheriff’s office decided in 2014 that it wouldn’t honor ICE detainers unless ICE gives the office a judicially issued warrant that authorizes detention, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a nonprofit organization which put together a map of sanctuary cities, counties, and states. That same year, in DeKalb County, Georgia, the sheriff’s department put a policy in place that would not honor a detainer unless it gives the office a warrant or “sufficient probable cause.” CIS last updated its map on May 30, 2018.
Kemp also supports strict voter ID laws that disenfranchise voters from marginalized groups.
Pence spent most of his speech talking about President Donald Trump rather than Brian Kemp, according to Mother Jones, but he did say Kemp was with Trump on gun rights, law enforcement, and the use of ICE, calling him “the real deal.”