‘Not on My Watch’: 2024 GOP Candidates Say US Should Reject Gazan Refugees

Palestinians with foreign passports arrive at the Rafah gate hoping to cross into Egypt as Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip continues on Oct. 14, 2023. Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images

As the Israel-Hamas war rages on in the Middle East, the leading Republican presidential contenders appear to agree that the United States should not accept any Gazan refugees.

But that hasn’t stopped them from quarreling over the specifics.

Over the past few days, a back-and-forth has unfolded between two of the top three candidates as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.S. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have traded blows.

The tiff began after the Florida governor shared his stance on the issue at an Oct. 14 town hall in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

“We cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees. I am not going to do that,” Mr. DeSantis said. “If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”

Hamas, an Islamic terrorist organization, has controlled Gaza since 2007. The group started the latest conflict on Oct. 7 with a surprise attack that killed roughly 1,400 Israelis, most of whom were civilians.

In response, Israel declared war, vowing to eliminate Hamas once and for all. But while the U.S. ally has repeatedly warned civilians in Gaza to flee before they are caught in the crossfire, evacuation has become more difficult as neighboring Arab states have closed their borders to refugees.

Noting this, Mr. DeSantis stressed that those nations should accept the refugees, not the United States.

And that’s a stance that Ms. Haley shares, according to her campaign. But when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper to comment on Mr. DeSantis’s claim that all Gazans are antisemitic, she pushed back.

“There are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule,” she said on Oct. 15. “They want to be free from all of that, and America’s always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists. And that’s what we have to do.”

When NBC News Now shared that position with Mr. DeSantis the next day, he said he thought she was “trying to be politically correct.”

“Nikki Haley would import people. That’s been her position, I get that. ... I would not import,” he said.

“The truth is, in Gaza, it’s a dysfunctional, toxic society in part because they teach young people to hate Jews,” he added. “That is endemic to their culture. … So you just have to understand that. And it doesn’t mean that they’re all members of Hamas, but what it does mean is that’s not something you want to import into the United States.”

Ms. Haley’s campaign has since clarified that she “opposes the U.S. taking in Gazans” and that she thinks “Hamas-supporting countries like Iran, Qatar, and Turkey should take any refugees.”

Others Sound Off

Other GOP presidential candidates have also shared their views on whether the United States should accept Gazan refugees.

“Not on my watch,” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said Oct. 16 at a foreign policy and national security event at Georgetown University in Washington.

The senator emphasized that it could be difficult to determine “who is safe to bring in, who’s not safe to bring in” in the middle of the conflict. “Therefore, not having any of the refugees come into our country is the right decision.”

However, he disagreed slightly with Mr. DeSantis’s position.

“I don’t think that they’re all antisemitic. I just can’t tell you who’s who,” he said.

Meanwhile, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy told Axios that, as president, he would consider helping to facilitate the emigration of refugees to other countries. “But this is not an issue where we should risk U.S. security or trade off the well-being of Americans here in the homeland,” he added.

But former President Donald Trump—the Republican front-runner—had perhaps the most detailed plan of the group for how he would respond to the situation.

During an Oct. 16 speech in Clive, Iowa, he vowed to implement “strong ideological screening for all immigrants to the United States” upon his return to the White House.

“No longer will we allow dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots, and maniacs to get residency in our country. ... If you empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified. ... If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified. If you support Hamas [or the ideology behind Hamas], you’re disqualified. If you’re a communist, a Marxist, or fascist ... you’re disqualified,” the former president said.

Vowing a reinstatement and expansion of the travel ban he implemented during his first term, he added that the United States would not “take in anyone from Gaza, or Syria, or Somalia, or Yemen, or Libya, or anywhere else that threatens our security.”

Nathan Worcester and The Associated Press contributed to this report.