Trump advisers struggle with deportation plan
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 ICE (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.”