Three attendees of the meeting told Univision that Trump would announce on Thursday that he plans to create a path to legalization for undocumented residents.
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump met on Saturday with a group of Hispanic supporters, promising them that despite his rabidly anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric throughout his campaign, he would find a “humane and efficient” way of treating the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.
Pressed on whether that plan would include a deportation force, Conway replied: “To be determined”.
One participant in the meeting in camera, the Trump camp is now open to suggestions for maintaining in the country of some illegal, provided that they are not naturalized.
That’s what Kellyanne Conway, the Republican nominee’s campaign manager, said on CNN’s State of the Union when repeatedly asked whether the Republican presidential nominee has changed its position on deportation.
Trailing Democrat Hillary Clinton in opinion polls for the November 8 election and struggling to broaden his support beyond the white working-class voters who have been his base of support, the NY businessman has reached out in recent days to black and Hispanic voters. And surrogate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told CBS’ Face the Nation that Trump is “wrestling” with how to handle deportations.
Indeed last November, Trump called for a “deportation force” to ” humanely” remove those illegally in the United States, but also previously spoke of an “expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal”. “That’s just plain fact”, the Alabama lawmaker said.
Trump has also been rebuked by opponents for his proposal to impose a temporary “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims seeking to enter the country, later rolled back to focus on countries with “a proven history of terrorism”.
When she didn’t work for the campaign five months ago, Conway urged Trump to “be transparent” and release his returns.
Aguirre Ferr said Trump “was clear” that he’s crafting his immigration policy and didn’t commit to any of the ideas presented at the meeting, although the full group agreed with him that border security should be an important part of any overhaul of immigration policy.
Conway and Breitbart News’ Steve Bannon were hired to run the campaign last week. She said the campaign would not release his 2008 returns that have already exited an audit, either, repeating the message of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
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The campaign’s new leadership combines Bannon, a combative conservative, with Conway, a data-driven analyst who has been trying to broaden Trump’s appeal to women and independent voters.
