Trump, speaking on the Iowa State Fairgrounds with hay bales stacked behind him, sought to clarify his views on how to overhaul the US immigration system after saying earlier in the week that he was softening on his plan to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants.
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So, for instance, the Clinton campaign points to Trump’s announcement speech on June 16, 2015, as evidence for an attack on all immigrants.
Trump sent out a modified version of the message to his followers, tweeting: “Her rallies are held in (blank) & she still has room” instead. Trump even questioned whether people born in the United States to people here illegally are citizens – even though they have automatically been considered citizens since the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1868. To get breaking news alerts, download the free News 2 App for iPhone or Android.
Now with less than three months before the election, Trump faces a hard path to the White House because of his narrow appeal, and his sky-high disapproval ratings among minorities. Trump remains opposed to legal status for undocumented immigrants, and on Saturday he reaffirmed his support for numerous restrictive proposals laid out in his August 2015 policy paper.
“I just don’t speak for Donald Trump”, Reince Priebus said Sunday.
Pence noted that no one was talking about illegal immigration until Trump raised it as an issue in the primaries.
Unlike George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and John McCain, his disapproval ratings among minority voter are sky-high.
Mike Pence says Donald Trump has been “completely consistent in his positions” on illegal immigration. Yet Conway later said Trump remains committed to “making sure that there’s no legalization”. Trump had suggested he might be “softening” on the deportation force and that he might be open to allowing at least some immigrants in the country illegally to stay, as long as they pay taxes. More than 650,000 applications have been approved, and presumably these people would be subject to deportation under a Trump presidency.
“I’ve had very strong people come up to me, really great, great people come up to me, and they’ve said, ‘Mr”.
Facing pushback from figures on the right like former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and right-wing commentator Ann Coulter, Trump then backtracked during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Host Jake Tapper told Pence that “the one issue that you didn’t really address is whether or not the 11 or 12 million undocumented immigrants will be removed by a deportation force, as you heard Mr. Trump say in that clip from November of past year”.
“We will have a mechanism for dealing with people in this country that – you heard the word ‘humanely.’ It will be fair and tough, but there will be no path to legalization and citizenship unless people leave the country”, the in governor said. One estimate by the American Action Forum, a conservative pro-immigration group, placed the cost of rounding up and deporting every undocumented immigrant and preventing future entries at $400 billion to $600 billion.
“It’s a process. You can’t take 11 (million) at one time and just say ‘boom, you’re gone, ‘” Trump told Cooper.
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The number of people Monmouth surveyed who said they do not have a favorable view of either candidate, 35%, is a record.
