A student asked the vice president why immigrants were sold a dream of coming to America, only to be told they no longer belong

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The question came amid the Trump administration’s unprecedented immigration crackdown since retaking office in January(Image: GETTY/X)

Vice President JD Vance was confronted with a pointed question during a live speaking engagement with Turning Point USA on Wednesday, in a recreation of the student debate series that launched the organization’s founder, Charlie Kirk, to conservative stardom.

“When you talk about too many immigrants here, when did you guys decide that number?

Why did you sell us a dream?

You made us spend our youth, our wealth in this country and gave us a dream,” a student told the vice president through a microphone at the event.

“You don’t owe us anything. We have worked hard for it.”

“How can you as a vice president stand there and say that we have too many of them now, and ‘we are going to take them out,’ to people who are here, rightfully so, by paying the money that you guys asked us?

You gave us the path and now how can you stop it and tell us we don’t belong here anymore?”

It comes as Vance breaks away from Trump over a critical issue ahead of a White House meeting.

The question came amid the Trump administration’s unprecedented immigration crackdown since retaking office in January, which has seen masked, armored immigration agents from various agencies descending on communities across the U.S. in an effort to detain and deport mass numbers of people they believe to be undocumented.

While the president claimed that his administration would target only “the worst of the worst,” immigration agents agents have routinely targeted big-box retail stores, apartment buildings, immigration courts and the exteriors of churches and schools, at times arresting bystanders and U.S. citizens in the mayhem.

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The US population is just over 340 million people, less than 52 million of whom are immigrants(Image: AP)

“So first of all, I can believe that we should have lower immigration levels, but if the United States passes a law and makes a promise to somebody, the United States of course has to honor that promise,” Vance replied to the student on Wednesday after joking about the length of her comment.

“Nobody’s talking about that. I’m talking about people who came in violation of the laws of the United States of America, and I’m talking about, in the future, reducing the number.”

“There are people who have come here through lawful immigration pathways that have contributed to the country,” Vance continued.

“But just because one person, or ten people, or a hundred people came in legally and have contributed to the United States of America, does that mean we’re thereby committed to let in a million, or ten million, or a hundred million people a year in the future? No, that’s not right.”

The U.S. population is just over 340 million people, less than 52 million of whom are immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center.

The student at Wednesday’s event raised her hand in the middle of Vance’s response, seemingly frustrated with his claim that she was considering allowing 100 million undocumented immigrants into the country each year.

Vance’s exaggerated claims about the number of undocumented immigrants living in and entering the country each year aligned with rhetoric from the Trump administration, which in recent months has launched a campaign on social media drawing comparisons between immigration enforcement and a military-style hunting party.

In his first 100 days back in office, Trump took 181 executive actions on immigration to stymie the arrival of new immigrants and deport non-citizen immigrants.

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In May, Stephen Miller and ‘border czar’ Tom Homan directed ICE agents to arrest 3,000 people they believed to be undocumented immigrants each day(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Protests erupted across the U.S. earlier this year when scores of masked ICE agents detained people believed to be immigrants in their homes, workplaces and public areas before driving them away in unmarked vehicles.

ICE, once focused on public safety and national security threats, pivoted under Trump’s command as the agency responsible for his promise to carry out mass deportations.

Unprecedented funding from his domestic spending bill this year transformed ICE into the largest law enforcement agency in the nation, surpassing the backing of each branch of the military.

Some agents reportedly welcomed the transition, which allowed them more sovereignty over who they could arrest, according to CNN.

Others felt pressured to carry out more arrests than are feasible, including targeting people with no criminal records.

In May, White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan directed ICE agents to arrest 3,000 people they believed to be undocumented immigrants each day, whether or not they had a criminal record.