Republican presidential primary front-runner Donald Trump maintained Tuesday night that, “at this moment,” he is still determined to deport the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.
Trump made the comment when asked if he might reconsider that pledge. “At this moment, absolutely not,” he said Tuesday night.
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The sincerity of Trump’s immigration rhetoric has been in question ever since Buzzfeed reported that the former reality TV star had contradicted his public statements during an off-the-record meeting with the New York Times.
Trump has allowed previously that some of his immigration policies are an opening position in a negotiation with Democrats. “It doesn’t mean I’m hard and fast 100 percent, but we to get a lot of what I’m asking for, or we’re not going to have a country any more,” he told the Washington Examiner in January. “It doesn’t mean you’re not going to negotiate a little bit, but I guess there will always be some negotiation. But they are very strong positions, and I would adhere to those positions very strongly. That doesn’t mean that at some point we won’t talk a little bit about some negotiation. Who wouldn’t do that?”
On Tuesday, after reminding Trump that his plan calls for deporting the nation’s illegal immigrants and then letting them back in legally, a reporter asked if Trump would skip the deportation step if he were elected president. “We either have borders or we don’t have borders, and, at this moment, absolutely not,” Trump reiterated.
He maintained emphatically that a border wall would be built if he is elected, a proposal that received a boost earlier Tuesday from the head of the U.S. Border Patrol. “We’ve seen great effect of the fencing, the wall that’s there, on the southern border,” acting chief Ronald Vitiello told a House panel.
