EXCLUSIVE: WICHITA, KANSAS — President Donald Trump is expected to tout his immigration agenda in ruby-red Kansas on Monday, weeks after federal immigration agents made dozens of arrests in the southwestern portion of the state.
Trump is headed to the Sunflower State for a rally just outside of Wichita as a tighter-than-expected Senate race that could determine the balance of power in the upper chamber unfolds.
Fox News Digital has learned that Trump will lean into the policy positions that helped propel him and Republicans to power two years ago.
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“President Trump stopped the invasion of our country and delivered Americans the most secure border in American history,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital. “Under the President’s leadership, 3 million illegals have left the United States and zero illegals have been released at the border in seventeen months.”
“Meanwhile, radical Democrats want to go back to their extreme open border policies, abolish ICE, and grant amnesty to the illegal aliens they released into our communities,” she continued.
The Trump-led Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have touted a string of arrests and deportations of illegal immigrants in the state over the last several months.
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According to the White House, among some of the “worst of the worst” who were arrested in the state by federal immigration officers include Omar Israel Hernandez of Mexico, convicted of first-degree murder, Jose Luis Rauda-Diaz of El Salvador, convicted of aggravated robbery and two counts of possession of a weapon, Oscar Sanchez-Corona of Mexico, who had previously been deported for drug offenses, damaging property, and driving under the influence, Greg Chukwuka Orji of Nigeria, convicted of dangerous drugs and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, and Alberto Estrada of Mexico, convicted of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and rape.
Trump’s rally comes as the race between Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton has cranked up in a state the president has won by double-digits in the last three presidential cycles and has given Republicans cause for concern in a state where voters haven’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century.
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan race ranker, downgraded the contest to a toss-up earlier this month and money from GOP and Democratic groups is flowing into the state.
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Marshall, who is vying for a second term, has run close to Trump, rarely breaking from him on key issues throughout this cycle. Hamilton, however, has run away from the Democratic establishment in Washington, D.C., and warned that if elected, he wouldn’t support Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for another term leading the caucus.
Trump’s appearance in the state also follows ICE’s three-day sweep in Southwest Kansas last month, dubbed “Operation Safe Community — Kansas,” where agents made over 100 arrests.
Marshall pushed back on the operation, demanding that “when ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement.”
“Our sheriffs and police know these communities better than anyone, and working together keeps officers and residents safe,” Marshall said on X.
Meanwhile, Republicans have targeted Hamilton for his immigration stance, accusing him through ads run by outside groups, like the Senate Leadership Fund, of supporting mass amnesty.
Hamilton, however, pushed back on the Biden administration’s immigration policies and told the Johnson County Post that the previous administration’s open border policies “caused a different kind of chaos.”
“Record crossings overwhelmed communities, and the immigration courts fell years behind,” Hamilton said. “I’m not for open borders, and dangerous criminals don’t belong here.”