Border States Become Critical for Ron DeSantis

Ron DeSantis took his presidential campaign to the heart of the U.S. immigration crisis Monday, placing a renewed focus on several key battleground states along the U.S.-Mexico border as he seeks to cut into Republican front-runner Donald Trump's support.

Monday's event—the final stop of a three-day fundraising trip through Texas—was the Florida governor's first in the key border state and intended to serve as a launch for his 2024 campaign's border policy as he seeks to compete with the aggressive policies established under Trump's presidency.

DeSantis toured the Rio Grande River, observing migrants as they entered the country illegally from Mexico. He touted his administration's anti-migrant policies as governor, and gibed Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts for its rapid relocation of undocumented migrants that he sent there as part of a larger effort to confront blue states with the weight of the ongoing immigration crisis.

"Governor DeSantis' visit to Texas this week is a significant move in his 2024 presidential campaign," Craig Agranoff, a Florida-based political consultant, told Newsweek. "The border is a hot-button issue among Republicans, and DeSantis' visit is a way for him to show that he is taking the issue seriously."

DeSantis took questions from the crowd, selling his own policies as governor to stem the tide of immigration.

Ahead of the event, Trump's campaign released a video showing DeSantis praising the former president's border policies. Shortly after the event, Trump's campaign team released his own border platform featuring a number of policies he'd championed that overlapped with several pillars of the DeSantis plan.

In his platform released Monday, DeSantis pledged to reimpose Trump's controversial "Remain in Mexico" policy and use every ounce of his executive authority to complete construction of a border wall he claimed Trump failed to see through.

But some of the measures DeSantis laid out went beyond those imposed by Trump, pledging in a press conference after the event to be "more aggressive" than the former president in his approach to the border.

"Gov. DeSantis has a plan to do on his first day in office what the Trump administration couldn't do after four years: shut down the border," Dave Vasquez, national press secretary for the DeSantis-affiliated political action committee Never Back Down, told Newsweek on Monday. "His plan calls for a declaration of a national emergency, the end of phony asylum claims and to finally build a border wall—without excuses or empty rhetoric."

He pledged to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. He proposed defunding aid programs and non-governmental organizations that work with undocumented migrants, claiming they help incentivize illegal immigration. He announced plans to strengthen the implementation of E-Verify programs across the country, similar to a recent controversial policy he imposed in Florida to verify workers' citizenship some have suggested could lead to labor shortages in his state.

And if elected, DeSantis pledged an aggressive policy of deterrence—including the potential use of force—against drug traffickers from Mexico found illegally entering the country through border fences and other barriers previously erected to stop them, evoking language of the migrant crisis as an "invasion" that threatened American sovereignty and residents' lives.

"I think you need adequate rules of engagement," he said. "If someone was breaking into your house, you would repel them with use of force, right? But yet if they have drugs, these backpacks, and they're going in and they're cutting through an enforced structure, we're just supposed to let them in. You know, I say use force to repel them. If you do that one time, they will never do it again."

"I think the state of Texas has a right to declare an invasion," he later said in response to an audience question. "I think states have a right to come in and help repel the invasion."

For Republican candidates, strong border policies have become essential parts of their platforms, with immigration ranking in polling as a top concern for a sizable share of the GOP base. It's no different for DeSantis, who has largely languished in the polls with 20 percent support: immigration, experts say, will be a critical issue for him to make up ground.

DeSantis' trip could also be seen as an attempt to secure support in several states along the border that could prove critical to his campaign as other candidates have made strong pushes in states like first-in-the-nation New Hampshire and Iowa, where figures like GOP challenger Tim Scott have placed emphasis in recent months.

Among the top fundraisers in the Republican field, DeSantis' campaign is built for endurance, with substantial reserves to help him outlast the cost of campaigning in early primary states that have often fueled the decline of past candidates' presidential ambitions.

According to Vazquez, the campaign has already committed $100 million to field operations alone, and has a presence in 18 states, though more up-to-date fundraising numbers won't be official until midway through July.

While New Hampshire's primary is still months away, DeSantis' campaign has already been hit with a series of missteps—including a recent dust-up with a leading Republican women's group in the state—that could potentially hurt him as he seeks to build on his 23 percent performance against Trump in a recent New Hampshire Journal poll of the state's Republican voters.

Trump, meanwhile, has scheduled an event for July 1 in South Carolina that some politicos in the state told Newsweek will likely be intended as a show of force for his campaign, offering him a forum to roll out key endorsements intended to solidify early support months after launching his campaign with the blessing of the state's Republican governor, Henry McMaster.

Candidates like Scott, meanwhile, have made Iowa a focal point of their strategy as they seek to build inroads with the influential evangelical community, making him the only candidate to see any significant movement in polls conducted there since the year's start.

A recent survey of likely voters in the Hawkeye state conducted by Trump-affiliated pollster McLaughlin & Associates found Scott had gained roughly 8 points up to 9 in the polls since its initial survey in April, placing him behind only Trump (51 percent) and DeSantis (19 percent), mirroring a campaign strategy aides for the campaign outlined to Newsweek and other outlets prior to his campaign's launch this year.

But while Iowa and New Hampshire are critical to establishing a candidate's credibility (and key to locking in future delegates in other states under Republican National Convention rules), a candidate still needs to secure a total of 1,234 delegates at the convention to land the nomination. And border states will be critical to achieving that.

Texas—where DeSantis was down to Trump by 18 points in a head-to-head contest, according to a recent May 30 poll from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC—will send 162 delegates to the convention, with shares going to candidates based on their performances at the state and local levels.

Arizona, where a recent Public Opinion Strategy poll showed DeSantis with a better chance of defeating President Joe Biden than Trump does, will send 43 on a winner-take-all basis.

New Mexico and California will send 191 combined, while DeSantis' home state of Florida—a winner-take-all state—will send 143. Other border-approximate states like Oklahoma and Nevada, an early-voting state where DeSantis has already secured key endorsements like former U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt, will send 43 and 26 delegates, respectively.

Winning those states, experts say, will be key to DeSantis' ability to compete.

"If he can make inroads in Texas and other border states, he will be in a much stronger position to win," Agranoff said.

Update 6/26/23, 4:13 p.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from Dave Vasquez.