If you were looking for a big softening on immigration from Donald Trump Wednesday night, you didn’t get it.
Yes, Trump stopped short of addressing what would happen to every last illegal immigrant in the United States. He even downplayed the significance of the frequently cited 11 million figure, saying the real number of illegal immigrants could be anywhere from 3 million to 30 million.
The Republican presidential nominee, fresh from a controversial but largely successful trip to Mexico, emphasized his respect for the neighboring country’s president, the Mexican people and Americans of Mexican ancestry. He argued that his immigration policies would be good for Latino Americans, as well as African Americans. He conceded that many illegal immigrants were good people, more clearly than in his campaign announcement speech that became known for the “Mexican rapists” line.
But there was little else in Trump’s rhetoric and even less in the substance of his ten-point plan during this highly anticipated speech that sought to moderate or dilute his tough message on immigration.
Trump pledged to continue making the removal of criminal aliens — that is, the subset of illegal immigrants who are being processed for committing other crimes — the top enforcement priority. “Day one, my first hour in office, they are gone,” he said.
Remove the ambitious deadline and it is consistent with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s position that criminal aliens must go. Except Trump listed examples of offenders who have not been deported or who have gone on to commit other heinous crimes, such as the Kate Steinle murder. And he would not just seek the removal of illegal alien convicts but “all illegal immigrants who are arrested for any crime whatsoever.”
That includes many people who would not be enforcement priorities under the Obama administration presently.
“According to federal data, there are at least 2 million criminal aliens now inside the country,” Trump declared. “We will begin moving them out day one, in joint operations with local, state and federal law enforcement.”
“Beyond the 2 million, there are a vast number of additional criminal illegal immigrants who have fled or evaded justice,” he continued. “But their days on the run will soon be over. They go out, and they go out fast.”
The GOP White House hopeful also pledged to reinstate programs designed to identify and remove illegal immigrants currently housed in local jails. These initiatives were helpful to the Obama administration when it was seeking higher deportation figures earlier in his time in office.
He also endorsed legislation named after people killed by illegal immigrants, such as Steinle and law enforcement officers Michael Davis and Danny Oliver, intended to facilitate the deportation of people with criminal records, gang affiliations or terror ties.
Trump vowed to deport illegal immigrants who become a public charge, a number that could be significant despite some bans on taxpayer monies to the undocumented based on welfare participation rates of immigrant households.
After some of Trump’s campaign staffers and surrogates had signaled ICE was the only “deportation force” he would need, the businessman did in fact call for the creation of a “special Deportation Task Force” inside the immigration enforcement agency. In an unscripted aside, he joked about it looking into deporting Hillary Clinton.
Trump opposed special path to citizenship or legal status for current illegal immigrants. He did not even advocate the “touchback amnesty” he’d previously hinted at and that his running mate Mike Pence proposed while a member of Congress. Trump said illegal immigrants could leave and apply to re-enter the country — but only through the existing legal immigration process, subject to the annual caps on the number of visas.
“You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the U.S. by illegally entering our country,” he maintained. He repeated his call for an “extreme vetting” process for those seeking to enter the U.S.
Then there was the subject of the “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall.” Mexican authorities insisted hours after their joint press conference with Trump that he had been told their government wouldn’t pay for the wall and Clinton’s campaign gleefully said the Republican nominee had gotten rolled in his first negotiation.
“We will build a great wall along the southern border,” Trump said as the crowd went wild. “And Mexico will pay for the wall. Hundred percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for the wall.”
Questions remain. It is possible that even with all the ambitious enforcement proposals Trump rolled out that many, perhaps most, of the estimated 11 million would remain “in the shadows” rather than be deported or legalized. Trump implied he would lower total immigration numbers, including legal unskilled immigration, yet also seemed to suggest the “new” legal system would be streamlined.
Trump called for 5,000 additional border patrol agents. Gang of Eight promised to hire 20,000.
Getting the Gulf States to set up “safe zones” for refugees at their expense or countries that don’t want to take back criminal aliens deported by the U.S. government to suddenly accept them could prove an even taller task than getting Mexico to pay for the wall. (You could at least argue a tax on remittances constitutes Mexico paying.)
The politics will also be questioned. For weeks, Trump has been honing a softer and more inclusive tone. This speech was advertised for days as a continuation of that theme, but instead it was red meat, complete with the candidate sharing embraces with family members of those slain by illegal immigrants.
Freshly re-nominated Joe Arpaio introduced Trump, who spoke at Arizona’s ground zero of contentious immigration politics. But past GOP amnesty boosters Marco Rubio and John McCain won their primaries Tuesday night, easily beating more effusive Trump supporters. On the other hand, both men have to a large extent backed away from their own past immigration bills (when McCain was congratulated on his victory by a warm-up speaker, some reportedly booed).
Trump is charting his own immigration path in a tough electoral environment.
