Mike Rogers says “a weak and porous southern border” is causing violence in his state.
Rogers, a former FBI special agent who later served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee during his tenure in Congress and is now running for the Republican Senate nomination in battleground Michigan, tells Fox News Digital that his campaign’s top issues are crime, the border, security, and “the economy, which is in the tank.”
Rogers, the obvious front-runner in the August GOP Senate primary, will most certainly face Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin in the fight to succeed longtime Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who will not seek re-election this year.
The seat is one of a few that Republicans hope to convert from blue to red in November as they seek to reclaim the Senate majority they lost in the 2020 election.
Rogers spoke with Fox News Digital minutes before he and other Republican leaders and law enforcement officials joined former President Donald Trump for a roundtable discussion and stood behind him at a subsequent campaign event, where the presumptive GOP presidential nominee criticized President Biden on crime and the border crisis.
“We’ve got a horrendous murder of Ruby Garcia right here in Kent County.” For months, criminal cartel groups have been operating in Oakland and Wayne County, on the state’s southeast side. They are well organized, and they are causing significant damage. “All of this is due to a porous southern border,” Rogers argued.
The Trump visit followed the March 22 murder of Garcia, a 25-year-old woman reportedly killed by an illegal immigrant who was deported to Mexico in 2020 but returned to the United States. The discovery of Garcia’s death along a Grand Rapids road has dominated local conservative talk radio and social media.
Garcia was in a romantic relationship with the suspect, Brandon Ortiz-Vite, who admitted to shooting her many times.
Rogers, referring to the roundtable session with law enforcement leaders who endorsed Trump minutes later, claimed that they “have been kicked in the teeth for the last three years by the Biden administration and Democrats.” This is their time to discuss actual policy improvements that will help them defend communities in Michigan.”
Rogers left politics in 2016, the year Trump won the presidency.
He returned to the campaign trail in late 2022 and early 2023, flirting with a longshot Republican presidential nomination bid and road-testing his message during appearances in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, the four early voting states in the GOP nomination contest. And part of his argument was that Trump’s tenure as party leader had ended.
However, the National Republican Senatorial Committee persuaded Rogers to abandon his White House bid and launch a Senate campaign last autumn after returning to Michigan from Florida.
He backed Trump in the Republican presidential nomination battle in January, and Trump reciprocated a month ago. In his remarks to the Michigan gathering, the former president mentioned Rogers again.
As he considered a presidential candidacy, Rogers was adamant in opposing Trump’s repeated, unfounded allegations that his 2020 election defeat to President Biden was the result of a “rigged” election that was “stolen.”
When asked how he reconciled his previous criticism with his present support for Trump, Rogers replied, “Politics are like family fights.” You have a family fight. You have disagreements. You get up the following day. You dust yourself off. You make a clever exit. We’re preparing wisely for a November victory.”
Aside from Trump’s endorsement, Rogers’ chances of winning the GOP nomination strengthened when former Detroit Police Chief James Craig quit his Senate run a month ago and later supported Rogers.
The Republican Senate field remains crowded. Other possibilities include two prominent Trump detractors, former Reps. Peter Meijer and Justin Amash, as well as entrepreneur and self-funded candidate Sandy Pensler.
Rogers stated that, despite Trump’s endorsement, they are used to being 1,000 points behind on a daily basis. We are taking nothing for granted. We’re still working to bring the party back together, every faction of it, to ensure that we have the infrastructure to defeat the Democrat machine in November.”
However, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Maeve Coyle said in a statement to Fox News that “Republicans are engulfed in a radioactive, expensive primary that will leave their eventual nominee deeply damaged.”
And he went on to say that “every day is bringing new and damaging revelations about National Republicans’ chosen candidate, Revolving Door Rogers—like how he supports a national abortion ban, enriched himself through ties to Chinese businesses, and ditched Michigan to live in a million-dollar Florida mansion the first chance he got.”
On the contentious issue of abortion, Rogers admitted, “I’m someone who supports life and always has.”
Rogers voted in Congress to impose federal abortion restrictions more than a decade ago. Now he is against such a move.
And, citing Michigan’s 2022 referendum to codify reproductive rights, including access to abortion, in the state constitution, Rogers stated, “Abortion is legal here in the state of Michigan. I will not return to Washington, D.C., to reverse the decision that I believe was made correctly. It is part of the [state] constitution. It is protected. It is lawful. I will not go back and amend that at the federal level.”
