It looks like President Trump’s deportation efforts are expanding to include four-legged immigrants. Monday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began visiting animal shelters across the country searching for purebred chihuahuas and obvious chihuahua mixed breed dogs. The agents have been instructed by the White House to round up all stray chihuahuas and send them back to Mexico. ICE has converted three military transport planes into flying animal shelters. Up to 1,200 of the dogs can be transported at one time.
“Chihuahuas are the bullies of the dog world. Everyone knows that. They’re mean. They bite. They’ll fight anything they can, even bigger dogs. They’re taking away homes from American dogs that are in shelters, dogs like labs, bulldogs, terriers, and others. I mean, what’s more American than a bulldog? How many bulldogs get passed up because someone sees a cute chihuahua and changes their mind and adopts it instead? A lot, I can tell. Thousands, if not millions. We need to return the animal shelters to American dogs. It’s time for the chihuahuas to go,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post early Monday.
In a White House press briefing Monday afternoon, Trump said he and his team were discussing expanding their chihuahua deportation efforts to include any dog that isn’t registered. “A pedigree is like a green card. If a dog doesn’t have a pedigree, it’s here illegally. Biden allowed 21 million immigrants to cross the border. A lot of them brought their dogs and they’ve done nothing but breed since they got here. Chihuahuas are taking over the dog world. We’re going to deport more chihuahuas than any other administration. We have no choice,” he said.
The president added that chihuahuas are costing other breeds their lives. “Just last month, near Mar a Lago, we had a large alligator eating people’s dogs. Our animal control folks down there, and they’re great people, they really are, they couldn’t trap the alligator because they were running down stray chihuahuas. I don’t know how many labrador retrievers, golden retrievers, Yorkies, and little French bulldogs lost their lives because of that. It was a lot, that I can tell you. Senseless. Just senseless. I told the trappers to bait their traps with the chihuahuas they were catching. But they wouldn’t do it. I would have. But we’re going to fix the problem. We’re going to save the lives of American dogs by closing the border to chihuahuas and deporting the strays and unregistered ones we have here.” Two of the chihuahua transport planes have already flown dogs to Mexico City. Three more are planned this week. President Trump said chihuahua deportations will remain a priority at least until the end of the month.