Trump: Youths in U.S. illegally can ‘rest easy’

WASHINGTON— Young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and living here illegally can “rest easy,” President Donald Trump said Friday, saying they will not be targets for deportation under his immigration policies.

Trump said his administration is “not after the dreamers, we are after the criminals.”

The president, who took a hard line on immigration as a candidate, vowed anew to fulfill his promise to construct a wall along the U.S.Mexico border.

But he stopped short of demanding that funding for the project be included in a spending bill Congress must pass by the end of nextweek in order to keep the government running.

“I want the border wall. My base definitelywants the border wall,” Trump said in the Oval Office interview.

Asked whether he would sign legislation that does not include money for the project, he said, “I just don’t knowyet.”

Eager to start making progress on other campaign promises, Trump said he would unveil a tax overhaul package next week — “Wednesday or shortly thereafter” — that would include a “massive” tax cut for both individuals and corporations.

He would not provide details of rate proposals or how he planned to pay for the package but asserted the cuts for Americans will be “bigger, I believe, than any tax cut ever.”

Congressional Republicans seemed caught off guard byTrump’s announcement and did not appear to have been briefed on the details of the White House’s forthcoming plan.

Trump spoke with The Associated Press ahead of his 100th day in office. He panned that marker as “artificial.”

But the White House is eager to tout progress on the agenda items he promised to fulfill in his first 100 days, despite setbacks including court bans on his proposed immigration limits and a high-profile failure in repealing and replacing the current health care law.

The president said Friday he spent his first 100 days laying the “foundation” for progress later in his administration, including by building relationships with foreign leaders. He cited German Chancellor AngelaMerkel as a leader he was surprised to have developed strong chemistry with, given that he has been critical of her handling of immigration policies.

As a candidate, Trump strongly criticized President Barack Obama for “illegal executive amnesties,” including actions to spare from deportation young people who were brought to the country as children and now are here illegally.

But after the election, Trump started speaking more favorably about these immigrants, popularly dubbed “dreamers.”

On Friday, he said that whenitcomesto them, “This is a case of heart.”

This week, attorneys for Juan Manuel Montes said the 23-year-old was recently deported to Mexico despite having qualified for deferred deportation. Trump said Montes’ case is “a little different than the dreamer case,” though he did not specify why.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was launched in 2012 as a stopgap to protect some young immigrants from deportation while the administration pushed for a broader immigration overhaul in Congress.

Obama’s administrative program offered a reprieve from deportation to those in the country illegally who could prove they arrived beforetheywere16, hadbeen in the United States for several years and had not committed a crime since being here.

It mimicked versions of the so-called DREAM Act, which would have provided legal status for young immigrants but was never passed by Congress.