GOP primary candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said the federal government has the authority under current federal law “to deport anybody who is in this country illegally.”

During Wednesday evening’s GOP primary debate on NewsNation, Ramaswamy said the president and Congress do not have to pass any additional laws to have the nation’s 11 million to 22 million illegal aliens deported.

The federal government, Ramaswamy said, can utilize the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s 287(g) program to allow local law enforcement to help detain and deport illegal aliens living within the interior of the United States.

“There are things that the government can do right now that nobody is talking about among the professional politicians in this race,” Ramaswamy said:

What about all of the illegals who are already here? Here’s the answer: There’s 287(g) provision in the law. That is something that already allows ICE agents to deputize or allow local law enforcement to enforce those ICE warrants. [Emphasis added]

And it shocks me that nobody in the Republican Party is talking about it because there are one million … law enforcement officials in this country and against that backdrop, we absolutely have that ability to deport anybody who is in this country illegally. [Emphasis added]

President Joe Biden’s administration, Breitbart News detailed, has worked to gut ICE’s 287(g) program. Through so-called “sanctuary country” orders that drastically limit the scope of which illegal aliens can be detained and deported by ICE agents, the administration has been able to hugely cut deportations.

In October, a House Judiciary Committee report from Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Tom McClintock (R-CA) suggested that Biden is failing to deport about 99 percent of illegal aliens arriving in the U.S.

By the end of 2022, records revealed that Biden cut by 70 percent the number of illegal aliens being deported from the interior of the U.S. after having been arrested by local or state law enforcement. The agency deported the fewest illegal alien gang members in Fiscal Year 2022 since former President Barack Obama was in office.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.