Speaking widely about his plans for mass deportations, President-elect Donald Trump said families with undocumented parents who have U.S.-born children would be deported together because he doesn’t “want to be breaking up families.”
“So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump said to Kristen Welker on Sunday’s episode of “Meet the Press.”
“Even kids who are here legally?” Welker asked.
“Well, what you’ve got to do if they want to stay with their father — look, we have to have rules and regulations,” Trump said.
Welker was asking Trump about the approximately 4 million mixed-status families in America, in which some family members have legal status and others are undocumented.
Trump’s answer echoes that of his “border czar,” Tom Homan, who in a “60 Minutes” interview in October said, “Families can be deported together,” in response to a question about how mass deportations can be carried out without separating families.
Later in the “Meet the Press” interview, he doubled down on the idea that families wouldn’t be separated.
“We’ll send the whole family, very humanely, back to the country where they came. That way the family’s not separated,” he said. “The family may decide to say, ‘I’d rather have Dad go, and we’ll stay here.’ And in which case they have that option.”
Trump appeared to have a softer stance toward “Dreamers,” the hundreds of thousands of people brought to the country as children by undocumented parents and protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.
“The Dreamers are going to come later, and we have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age,” Trump said.
He said he wanted to “work with Democrats” on a plan for the Dreamers to stay.
Also in the interview, Trump vowed to use an executive action to end birthright citizenship, something that is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. When asked if that’s even possible, he said, “Well, we’re going to have to get it changed. We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it.” He incorrectly said that America is the only country to have birthright citizenship — about three dozen countries, including Canada and Mexico, provide birthright citizenship.
During Trump’s 2024 campaign, he promised to deport undocumented immigrants living in the United States, saying he will focus on “violent criminals” ― but seemingly meaning the roughly 11 million undocumented people in the country are all part of that group.
In September at a campaign rally, Trump said deporting undocumented immigrants would be a “bloody story.” His allies have said prison camps will be needed to deport immigrants.
Democracy In The Balance
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In 2016, Trump said former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback,” which was named after a slur and deported a reported 1 million immigrants in 1954, was “a very effective chapter,” according to “some people.”
Sunday’s interview on “Meet the Press” was Trump’s first as president-elect.
Other topics covered in the interview included pardons for Jan. 6, 2021, rioters, grocery prices and the lack of detail about his health care plan.
Trump also spoke about Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, whom Trump plans to nominate for secretary of defense. Hegseth has been accused of rape and drinking on the job, and his mother once called him an “abuser of women.” Trump said Hegseth has a “tremendous track record.”