“Big crowds, looking for a larger venue”, Trump tweeted later Sunday.
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As per the poll, Ms. Clinton is winning 85 per cent of self-identified Democrats, while Mr. Trump has the support of fewer Republicans at 78 per cent.
Trump’s campaign earlier had scheduled the speech for last Thursday, but canceled it as he wrestled with the complex policy.
Trump’s immigration speech in Arizona will come after he and Clinton spent last week trading accusations on racial issues. He insisted that such a plan would not amount to the “amnesty” that’s anathema to many core supporters of the Republican Party. 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.
“Criminal”, answered the governor, who is also Trump’s transition planning chief.
“Those are the things that Donald Trump is going to answer”.
Republican rivals scoffed at the sheer unfeasibility of his proposal – leading Trump to cite the model of the 1954 “Operation Wetback” under President Dwight Eisenhower, which rounded up thousands of undocumented immigrants from USA fields and ranches, bused them to detention centers, and sent them back to Mexico, first by airlift, and then by cargo boat – a journey that was widely denounced as inhumane.
According to Trump’s campaign, the room can hold between 8,000 and 10,000 people, but the city of Phoenix’s fire marshal will have the final say on capacity once the layout of the stage and chairs are determined. Per Trump’s tweet late Sunday, that event is back on.
Asked whether the “deportation force” proposal Trump laid out in November is still in place, Pence replied: “Well, what you heard him describe there, in his usual plainspoken, American way, was a mechanism, not a policy”.
His campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said immigrants who entered the country illegally would likely first have to return home before applying through legal channels.
Pence appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union”, Priebus was on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, and Conway was on “Fox News Sunday” and CBS’ “Face the Nation”.
In his speech on Saturday in Iowa, Trump said he would seek to institute a tracking system to ensure illegal immigrants who overstay their visas are quickly removed, and would propose an e-verify system to prevent undocumented residents from gaining access to welfare and other benefits. That, he said, “is a subject for the future”.
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“You see someone who is engaging the American people, listening to the American people, hearing from all sides”, Pence told Tapper, promising that Trump would soon “articulate a policy” on the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country.
