Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he simply wants to “follow the law” on immigration, saying if and when he wins, the “bad ones” are going to get sent out of the country.
“I just want to follow the law. What I’m doing is following the law,” Mr. Trump said on Monday’s “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News.
“We’re going to obey the existing laws. Now, the existing laws are very strong,” he said. “The first thing we’re going to do, if and when I win, is we’re going to get rid of all the bad ones.”
“We got gang members, we have killers — we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country,” Mr. Trump said. “The police know who they are. They’re known by law enforcement who they are.”
“They’re going to be out of this country so fast, your head will spin,” he said. “We have existing laws that allow you to do that.”
“As far as everybody else, we’re going to go through the process,” Mr. Trump said.
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Mr. Trump pointed out the number of deportations that have occurred under President Obama.
“What people don’t know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country. Bush the same thing,” he said. “Lots of people were brought out the country with the existing laws. Well, I’m going to do the same thing. … We want to do it in a very humane manner.”
There were reports that Mr. Trump might have been expressed an openness to softening his hardline immigration policy during a meeting over the weekend with a Hispanic advisory council, but Mr. Trump said that’s not accurate.
“We had a great meeting with Hispanic leaders. It was at Trump Tower,” he said. “I think it was very obvious what took place because they came out and they said exactly what took place, but the media got it wrong.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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