(MENAFN- Live Mint) US Vice President JD Vance faced a tense exchange at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi after an Indian-origin woman questioned him over the Trump administration's hardline immigration stance.

'Why did you sell us a dream?'

The woman, speaking during the Q&A session, challenged Vance on the administration's push to drastically reduce immigration numbers.

“When you talk about too many immigrants here, when did you guys decide that number? Why did you sell us a dream?” she asked, drawing applause from the audience.

She continued,“You made us spend our youth, our wealth in this country and gave us a dream. You don't owe us anything. We have worked hard for it.”

Visibly emotional, she added,“How can you, as vice president, stand there and say that 'we have too many of them now, and we are going to take them out'-to people who are here rightfully so by paying the money that you guys asked us? You gave us the path, and now how can you stop it and tell us we don't belong here anymore?”

Vance responded lightly to her initial remarks, saying,“We are not close to causing a scene. Don't worry.”

Vance calls for 'much lower' immigration levels

Earlier, while addressing students, Vance said,“We have to get the overall numbers way, way down,” though he did not specify what level of legal immigration he considers acceptable.

He added,“It's far less than what we've been accepting.”

'We must honour promises but enforce laws'

Responding to the woman's question, Vance differentiated between legal and illegal immigration.

“I can believe that we should have lower immigration levels, but if the United States passed a law and made a promise to somebody, the United States, of course, has to honour that promise,” he said.

He emphasized that his focus was on people who violated immigration laws:“I'm talking about people who came in, in violation of the laws of the United States of America. And I'm talking about in the future, reducing the number of people.”

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Defending his position, Vance said,“We cannot have an immigration policy where what was good for the country 50 or 60 years ago binds the country inevitably for the future.”

He added,“There's too many people who want to come to the United States, and my job as vice president is not to look out for the interests of the whole world. It's to look out for the people of the United States.”

Deportations under Trump's second term

In President Donald Trump's second term, his administration has deported thousands of illegal immigrants, continuing a tough immigration policy that has faced criticism from civil rights groups and immigrant communities.

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