Trump Campaign Now Says Immigrant Deportation Force ‘To Be Determined’

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Donald Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, on Sunday said that the creation of a “deportation force” for undocumented immigrants under a Trump administration was “to be determined.”

Throughout the Republican primary, Trump supported the forcible removal of the some 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to live in the United States.

Last November, he called for a deportation force to do the job. In an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he said, “You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely.”

Trump has made the vilification of immigrants a central part of his campaign: from his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border (and claims that Mexico will “pay for it”) to his call to ban people who are Muslim from traveling to the United States. He made headlines in June for saying that an American-born judge presiding over a Trump University lawsuit could not be impartial because of the judge’s Hispanic ancestry.

But in August, his campaign convened a meeting of a new Hispanic advisory board. Speaking to NBC Latino of an “open-minded” Trump, Hispanic supporters who attended the meeting suggested the GOP candidate would unveil a new immigration plan that offered solutions beyond deportation.

In light of the meeting and apparent policy reversal, CNN’s Dana Bash pressed Conway, who was named Trump’s campaign manager just days ago, Sunday on whether Trump still supported launching the deportation force he called for during the primary.

Conway evaded the question twice, then responded, “To be determined.”

(h/t NBC News)

Reality

While Conway’s answer does not completely discount a deportation force, it does put it in to question, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

With the many other flip-flops since becoming the Republican party’s nominee, he’s rejected virtually every stance that his supporters loved which separated him from the other candidates during the primaries. How could Trump be taken at his word for anything anymore?

As we explained in our policy review of Trump’s immigration reform, mass deportations would involve rounding up every undocumented person and forcibly removing them from the country. What Trump is advocating here, the forced removal of a portion of a population with the same national heritage from an area, already has a name, it’s called “ethnic cleansing” and it is not seen as a positive and moral thing. On top of the horrific crimes against humanity being proposed, what Trump also fails to mention here is the cost. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told lawmakers that it costs about $12,500 to deport one immigrant from the United States. Multiply that by 11.3 million, and you get $141.3 billion.

Along with tripping the number of ICE agents and a nationwide E-Verify system, Trumps plan would be a giant middle finger to individual freedom and morality while costing the taxpayers over $160 billion.

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