PHOENIX — Donald Trump tried to move past a week of vacillating on immigration, his signature issue, by asserting in a speech Wednesday that the question of what to do with 11 million people in the U.S illegally is not central to the problem.
“Anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington,” Trump said to cheers from thousands of supporters here at the Phoenix Convention Center.
Rather, Trump said that President Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s policies are to blame for “countless American” deaths at the hands of immigrants in the country illegally. He said the main problem with the immigration system is that it serves the needs of wealthy donors, interest groups and politicians. He warned that Clinton was planning to broadly expand her powers if elected, in defiance of the Constitution, to grant increased “executive amnesty.”
Trump’s immigration plan mirrored his foreign policy slogan: America first.
“We will be fair, just and compassionate to all,” he said. “But our greatest compassion must be for our American citizens.”
Trump, who has gone back and forth on his prior pledge to use a special force to round up the 11 million immigrants in the country without authorization, tried to reframe the debate with a new plan that includes what he termed a deportation task force, but said it would focus on those who have committed crimes. That’s similar to Obama’s current policy.
Other parts of his plan, like adding 5,000 border patrol agents, echoes legislation that passed the U.S. Senate in 2013 that would have added 20,000 border agents, fourfold what Trump suggested. Trump was highly critical of that proposal during the Republican primary, singling out Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for his role in drafting it. The bill eventually died in Congress.
Other plans included his long-promised border wall. He did not specify whether it would be entirely a physical structure, which would be impractical and prohibitively expensive in many areas marked by natural geographic boundaries. He also reiterated his promise that Mexico would pay for the wall, something Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and other government officials have called a non-starter.
Trump’s speech capped a whirlwind day in which he made a last-minute stop in Mexico City to meet with Pena Nieto for an hour, intensifying attention on Trump’s sharp rhetoric on immigration and Mexican trade.
Trump’s immigration views rocketed him to the top of the GOP field and propelled him to the Republican nomination, but the issue has bedeviled him in the general election campaign. Only about 1 in 5 Latino voters supports him, according to a recent Fox News poll. Some strategists believe his sharp tone and unsparing policy proposals may also be dragging down his support among other groups of voters who recoil at the vision of rounding up 11 million immigrants who entered the country illegally.