President-elect Donald J. Trump joined “Meet the Press” on Sunday for a brief interview. Trump spoke at length about immigration and said he plans to deport illegal immigrants, starting with criminals and then “the others.”
“I think you have to do it and it’s a very tough thing to do,” Trump said. “But you have to have unity and rules, regulations, laws — they came in illegally.”
Trump said those who have been waiting to enter America legally for 10 years have been treated unfairly and his hope is to make it very easy for people to enter the country legally. According to Trump, 13,099 murderers have been released into the United States during the Biden Administration.
“They’re walking down the streets, walking next to you and your family,” he said. “These are murderers, many of whom murdered more than one person. You don’t want those people in this country.”
Venezuela’s prisons are as empty as they’ve ever been, Trump said. And some of the illegal immigrants have been released from mental institutions in other countries.
Trump said they’ll start deportations with the criminals and then start “with others.”
“And we’re going to see how it goes,” he said.
As for the Dreamers, Trump said he does not want to deport them and is willing to work with Democrats to find something that will work to keep them in America.
Families with mixed immigration status will have difficult decisions to make, although Trump said he doesn’t want to break up families and the only way not to break up families is to “keep them together and send them all back.”
Trump renewed his commitment to end birthright citizenship, noting that America is the only country with such a policy.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “I was going to do it through executive action then we had to fix COVID. We have to end it.”
