Hours after hard-line speech, Trump says 'there's softening' in his immigration plan
On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump traveled to Mexico to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto and discuss his proposals for reforming the U.S. immigration system. After a campaign spent spouting forceful rhetoric against immigrants — and those from Mexico in particular — Trump appeared subdued next to Peña Nieto, and at a joint press conference he said that he felt a "tremendous feeling" toward Mexican-Americans. While both men "recognize the right of either country to build a physical" border wall, Trump said, the issue of who would pay for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — the central tenet of Trump's hard-line immigration policy — was not discussed.
Then, Trump hopped on a plane and flew back over that much-discussed border, landing in Arizona and apparently leaving the rhetoric of mutual respect behind him. "I am going to create a new special deportation task force," Trump said in a half-rally, half-policy speech appearance in Phoenix. He also reverted to his campaign promise to round up and deport 11 million illegal immigrants: "Day one, my first hour in office, those people are gone."
And then, probably, Trump hit the hay for the night, and in his sleep he shed the pesky burdens of the day, as one does. Because when he woke up Thursday morning for an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, he had this to say about his immigration policies:
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So, what does Trump think about immigration? Basically, this.
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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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