Several of Donald Trump’s top campaign advisers and allies on Sunday struggled to explain the GOP presidential nominee’s stance on mass deportation — insisting that he will prioritize undocumented criminals for deportation, but falling short on other details and playing down the scale of his deportation priorities by millions of people.
“After the two to three million get put out of the country because they’re committing crimes, hurting Americans, selling drugs, doing things that are illegal, once those people are dealt with first — and I think everyone agrees on that issue — then we can deal with the remaining eight million people,” New Jersey Gov. Christie Christie said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
The number Christie cited both undersold the scale of Trump’s plan and overstated the estimated number of undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes.
Trump laid out his priorities during a high-profile immigration policy address on Wednesday in Phoenix, saying he would target for immediate deportation undocumented immigrants who had committed crimes and those who overstayed their visas.
Those priorities suggest a dramatic escalation of deportations from current levels: an estimated 690,000 people who have committed crimes, plus an estimated 4.5 million individuals who have overstayed their visas. In all, based on various estimates, Trump’s deportation priorities would target 5 million to 6.5 million individuals — or about half of the total 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, when asked about the plan for undocumented immigrants who are not immediate deportation priorities, said the solution will have to be discussed at a later date.
“Once you enforce the law, once you get rid of the criminals, once you triple the number of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents, once you secure the southern border, once you turn off the jobs … and benefits magnet, then we’ll see where we are,” she said Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week.” “And we don’t know where we’ll be. We don’t know who will be left. We don’t know where they live, who they are. That’s the whole point here, that we’ve actually never tried this.”
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, when asked directly about the other undocumented immigrants, provided no additional details during a prerecorded interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“I think Donald Trump’s been completely consistent, and I think he did answer,” Pence said.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani took it a step further, stating that Trump’s plan leaves “a very big opening” for dealing with the fate of the millions of nonprioritized undocumented immigrants. He also stressed that he does not believe Trump would want to break up families with undocumented immigrants.
That stands in contrast to Trump’s assertion that all immigrants living in the United States illegally must go back to their home countries.
“[I]f you read that speech carefully, that speech is consistent with what he said in the past, and it leaves a very big opening for what will happen with the people that remain here in the United States after the criminals are removed and after the border is secure,” Giuliani said. “Donald Trump, as he expressed in one of his interviews recently, would find it very, very difficult to throw out a family that’s been here for 15 years, and they have three children, two of whom are citizens. And that is not the kind of America he wants.”
Asked specifically whether Trump will kick out undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, known as “Dreamers,” Giuliani said it would depend on the person.
“I would say that would be one of the things that would be pretty clear. There are other options, too. I mean, it’s going to depend on the person,” Giuliani said. “And maybe some of them have to be thrown out, but not necessarily all of them.”
Hillary Clinton’s campaign seized on the advisers’ television appearances on Sunday morning to accuse Trump of intentionally misleading voters about his immigration plan.
“What we saw today is Mike Pence and Trump’s top campaign officials attempt to mislead voters about their mass deportation policy by using soft words to describe harsh tactics — one of the oldest tricks in the book,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement.