President Donald Trump’s high-profile immigration raids have sparked protests across the country and prompted even some Republicans to question whether the strategy is misguided.
During an interview Thursday on the Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air, Missouri U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt said Trump is carrying out a campaign promise to deport people who are in the country without legal status. He said that critics of the president are being inconsistent, pointing to how Democratic presidents like Barack Obama deported millions of people when he was in office.
“Do I believe that we should enforce federal law to deport illegal immigrants on a massive scale? I do,” Schmitt said. “And President Trump ran on this. This is not a surprise. This was put squarely in front of the American voters last November. There were two big issues. There was immigration, and there was inflation, right? And so President Trump was very clear, we are going to deport the 15 million people here illegally. We're going to start with the worst of the worst, but we're actually going to enforce federal law. And if you don't enforce it, the law really doesn't mean much.”
There are some federal laws, though, that Trump isn’t actively enforcing. For instance, his Drug Enforcement Administration isn’t cracking down on states like Missouri that authorized the sale of marijuana – even though that drug is illegal federally. And Trump is allowing TikTok to continue operating in the United States, even though that social media platform hasn’t complied with a federal law requiring it to divest from a Chinese parent company.
But when presented with those two examples of how Trump isn’t actively enforcing federal laws, Schmitt didn’t find either instance compelling.
“You didn't have the president of the United States running on the two issues that you mentioned,” Schmitt said. “Elections have consequences, as many people have said. And one of the consequences here is we have a president that's going to enforce immigration laws, and that's just going to be the reality that's not going to change.”
Schmitt also said he supported Trump taking control of the California National Guard against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. A district judge ruled that Trump illegally commandeered the Guard, but an appeals court stayed that ruling.
“ICE agents are being attacked,” Schmitt said. “When that happens, the president of the United States has the ability to protect those assets and people. And that's what's at stake here.”
Monitoring the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’
Schmitt doesn’t think Trump’s falling out with Elon Musk will hurt prospects to pass the budget legislation known as the Big Beautiful Bill. It contains an array of tax cuts, immigration-related measures and raising the debt ceiling.
Musk, who spent several hundred million dollars to get Trump elected, lambasted the legislation amid estimates that it will balloon the national debt. Musk’s criticism sparked a bitter war of words between the billionaire and the president – a stark change from the beginning of Trump’s return to the White House.
Schmitt said Musk is “very sincere in his efforts to find real savings, structural savings.”
“I think he cares about the skyrocketing national debt, and those are concerns that I share, too,” Schmitt said. “And I think that we're going to have a chance as that House bill, the Big, Beautiful Bill, made its way over to the Senate, now we want to make it more beautiful.”
One potential sticking point is how the final version of the legislation affects Medicaid. While the House version didn’t end up lowering the federal share of funds that pay for Medicaid expansion in states like Missouri, critics of the legislation contend it will hurt rural hospitals and kicking people off the program.
During a call with reporters on Friday, Schmitt’s Missouri colleague, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, reiterated that the final version of the bill can’t cut benefits to Medicaid recipients. The Republican senator is in favor of requiring people to document that they’re working, an idea that generally has less opposition among GOP federal lawmakers.
“I would just point out it also happens to be the president's position, which is probably the most important thing in this back and forth,” Hawley said. “I mean, this is what I continue to tell my colleagues. Anybody who asks me and who's interested in this: Why don't we just listen to the guy who won the election who said that he doesn't want any Medicaid benefit cuts? He doesn't want rural hospitals to close.”
Schmitt said that with the exception of keeping Medicaid out of reach for immigrants without legal status, he agrees with Hawley that he doesn’t want benefits taken away – and added he’s trying to craft safeguards for people with disabilities.
“I'm actually working on a provision to help strengthen this for people who are most vulnerable, and I think that's something that we can kind of all come together on,” Schmitt said.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Darrious Varner is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
