Trump ally floats dubious immigration scheme after major Supreme Court rebuke

After being dealt another defeat by the conservative Supreme Court, President Donald Trump called on Congress to end birthright citizenship, but one of his biggest supporters on Capitol Hill is going a step further and is now calling for a ten-year moratorium on all immigration.

"We need to put a bed sheet over the Statue of Liberty for ten years," Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) exclusively told Raw Story at the Capitol. "Moratorium. Ten years. Until we can figure out what the hell is going on in this country. Who's even here? How many are here?"

Nehls has previously pushed ten-year immigration bans for migrants coming from Somalia and Venezuela, but he says an all-out ban on legal immigration to America is now needed, in part, because some migrants have been critical of President Trump and his immigration crackdown.

"They are abusing the freedoms and liberties that we have. They are,” Nehls said. “They come over here, they say they're trying to escape oppression and all that other stuff, but then they come over here, and you get a lot of them; they don't even like us. They don't respect the culture. They don't respect the President of the United States.”

Without providing any evidence, Nehls decried legal immigration as a key part of the Democrats’ plan.

“You've even got some Democrats, a majority of Democrats, saying they're not even proud to be an American — then what the hell are you doing here?” Nehls continued. “So the birthright citizenship, the idea that women from China can come over, have a baby, and now that little baby is an American citizen and affect our elections in the future, that's what the Democrats want.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, Trump’s Justice Department vowed it’s “committed to tackling illegal birth tourism schemes by working diligently with U.S. Attorneys across the country to uphold the law.”

“Actors seeking to exploit loopholes to obtain automatic citizenship for their children pose a national security threat and will be brought to justice,” reads the DOJ statement.

Nehls wants to go a step further and devote more federal dollars to this new DOJ effort.

“Let's double up the attorney general's office in the states and go after and look with a fine-tooth comb, look at all the people that are here on visas and how many of them have overstayed. And if you have overstayed your visa, you're out of here. You're out of here,” Nehls told Raw Story. “A big bed sheet over the Statue of Liberty for ten years.”