GOP VP nominee Pence to visit Dalton Tuesday

Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence plans to visit Dalton, Ga., on Tuesday afternoon.

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ranger, said the campaign is planning a stop in Dalton, but many details are still up in the air. The Dalton Police Department had not been informed of the event when a reporter contacted it Friday.

Around 2 p.m., a Twitter account for Graves announced a town hall forum is in the works. It was not Graves’ official account, though a spokesman for Graves said U.S. House rules ban representatives from using “official channels” for political communications.

For a campaign hoping to soften its stance on immigration, Dalton makes sense for Pence. About 48 percent of the city’s 33,000 residents are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While a key tenet of Trump’s campaign has been a tough stance on immigration policy and using a “deportation force” to round up illegal immigrants, according to The New York Times, the Republican presidential nominee has discussed this week working with such immigrants to let them stay in the United States.

“No citizenship,” Trump said on Fox News this week, according to The Times. “They’ll pay back taxes. They have to pay taxes,” he added. “There’s no amnesty, but we will work with them.”