TRUMP ‘SOFTENING’
migrants currently residing in the U.S. illegally.
“The tone of his rhetoric last night disguised that he’s sticking with his position of last week that he’s no longer for mass deportation of noncriminals,” said Roy Beck, the executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that supports immigration limits.
“He’s absolutely not calling for roundups or mass deportation,” added Beck, who doesn’t advocate mass deportation and who applauded Trump’s address. “He said everyone is subject to deportation, stating what the law is. That’s not even close to the mass deportation he talked about last year.”
Trump conceded as much Thursday in an interview on talk radio host Laura Ingraham’s show.
“Oh, there’s softening,” Trump said. “Look, we do it in a very humane way, and we’re going to see with the people that are in the country. Obviously, I want to get the gang members out, the drug peddlers out. I want to get the drug dealers out. We’ve got a lot of people in this country that you can’t have, and those people we’ll get out.”
The number of people who could be deported under Trump’s blueprint is significant.
As many as 5.5 million of the 11 million immigrants here illegally have expired visas, based on figures provided by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research center.
About 690,000 immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally have committed crimes — felonies or misdemeanors — serious enough to be prioritized for deportation.
But that would leave about 6 million apparently allowed to stay for an indefinite period.