WATCH: Haitian immigrant pleads with public and Trump: "I don't eat dogs or cats"

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Thursday stood by past remarks calling Haitian migrants who have entered the U.S. through a Biden-era parole program or who are protected from deportation "illegal aliens" — amid an ongoing debate about migration into the U.S.

Vance was asked at a campaign event about why he was referring to migrants from Haiti in towns like Springfield, Ohio, as "illegal aliens" when many of them have come in through the parole processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans (CHNV) or are protected from deportation via Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

"The media loves to say that the Haitian migrants — hundreds of thousands of them, by the way, 20,000 in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of them all across the country — they are here legally."

"And what they mean is that Kamala Harris used two separate programs, mass parole and Temporary Protected Status. She used two programs to wave a wand and to say, we're not going to deport those people here," he said. "Well, if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I'm still going to call them an illegal alien. An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make any alien legal. That is not how this works. "

The CHNV parole processes were expanded by the Department of Homeland Security in 2023 to allow up to 30,000 migrants from those four countries into the U.S. each month if they are vetted and have a supporter already in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration redesignated and extended TPS for Haiti last year, offering protection from deportation and work permits for hundreds of thousands of Haitians — even those in the country illegally.

Republicans have objected to the use of parole programs by the Biden administration, both the CHNV program and the use of the CBP One app at ports of entry to allow in 1,450 migrants per day via parole. They argue that Congress has limited the use of parole to a "case by case" basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, and that use of parole in such quantities is a breach of that. Republican states sued over the CHNV program this year, but they have lost in court.