Donald Trump reveals his 10-point immigration plan: 'There will be no amnesty'
Donald Trump delivered a speech on immigration Wednesday night in Phoenix, and promised that if his 10-point plan is followed, "peace, law, justice, and prosperity will prevail."
The Republican presidential nominee arrived in Arizona hours after his meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Trump said the pair had a "thoughtful and substantive conversation, and it will go on for awhile, and in the end, we're all gonna win, both countries." In Phoenix, Trump spent more than an hour discussing immigration, visas, the "beautiful" wall he will build, and assimilation (sometimes, he said, it "doesn't work out" for people, and it is "our right" to choose immigrants the "likeliest to thrive and flourish and love us"). "There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the wellbeing of the American people," he said. The audience cheered for him throughout the speech, chanting at times "USA! USA!" but did boo sanctuary cities, San Francisco, the media, any Democrat named, and global warming (not because it's bad, but because scientists say it exists).
Trump went through his 10-step policy to combat illegal immigration and strengthen legal immigration, including his famous call for a "great wall along the southern border. Mexico will pay, 100 percent. They don't know it yet, but they're gonna pay for it." This wall, he continued, will be built on "Day 1" of a Trump presidency, and will be "impenetrable, tall, powerful, [and] beautiful" with "above and below ground sensors, towers, aerial surveillance." Also on Day 1, in fact in his "first hour in office," he would make sure that "criminal aliens" are deported, Trump said, and he would "issue detainers for illegal immigrants arrested for any crime whatsoever."
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Trump went on to say "there will be no amnesty," and he would triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and start a new deportation task force, which he suggested could possibly also deport his opponent, American citizen Hillary Clinton. He also said that anyone who "illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of our country" and he would "cancel unconstitutional executive orders and enforce all immigration orders." When it comes to legal immigration, Trump said he wants to see "extreme vetting," and new screening tests "to make sure those we are admitting to our country share our values and love our people." He would suspend immigration from Syria and Libya, instead setting up safe zones in their countries.
At the end of the speech, Trump was joined onstage by several supporters whose relatives were killed by undocumented immigrants, and he told the audience his hope is to unite the country and see "illegal immigration a memory of the past."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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