Trump: Undocumented immigrants 'have to go'
WASHINGTON – Donald Trump vowed Sunday to reverse President Obama's executive actions that have shielded millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, saying that "they have to go.''
"We either have a country or we don't have a country,'' the Republican presidential contender said in a wide-ranging interview on NBC's Meet The Press.
Continuing the hard-line on immigration that he staked out when he first announced his candidacy, the New York businessman also suggested that he do away birth-right citizenship. "They're having a baby. And all of a sudden, nobody knows... the baby is here,'' Trump said. "And we're going to try and bring them back rapidly, the good ones.''
Of his plans to repeal the Obama administration's immigration orders, including "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, Trump wants the actions to be rescinded. "We have to make a whole new set of standards. And when people come in, they have to come in legally.''
While the executive actions were designed to keep immigrant families together, Trump said his plan would do just that, suggesting that entire families would be removed. "We're going to keep the families together; we have to keep the families together.''
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Trump also reiterated his promise to build a wall along the southwest border with Mexico and his demand that the Mexican government pay for it. "I'm a huge fan of the Mexican people,'' he said. "I have thousands of Mexican people working for me right now and have over the years. But they have to pay for the wall. And we need the wall.''
Frank Sharry, executive director of immigration advocate America's Voice, said Trump's immigration policies "are as dangerous as they are stunning.''
"Trump proposes to round up 11 million hardworking immigrants, a population the size of the state of Ohio. "He promises to rescind protections for (the children of the undocumented) and deport them. He wants to redefine the constitutional definition of U.S. citizenship as codified by the 14th Amendment...In sum, Trump comes down firmly on the far right fringes of the debate.''
In the interview, Trump also offered his views on issues from national security to his own brand of energy diplomacy.
On defeating Islamic State militants, Trump said the key is to take away their wealth by taking back the oil fields under their control in Iraq. Told by Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that such a move could require ground troops, Trump responded, “That’s OK.” He said the Iraqis should be given “something” from their oil fields but, in an apparent reference to Iraq War veterans, “we should definitely take back money for our soldiers.”
Trump in the past has accused Saudi Arabia of being the world’s biggest funder of terrorism. On Sunday, he said the Gulf nation should be paying the U.S. because it wouldn’t exist without American support. And, Trump said, the only reason the U.S. supports Saudi Arabia is because it needs the oil. “Now, we don’t need the oil so much,” he said in an apparent reference to U.S. oil and gas production. “And if we let our people really go, we wouldn’t need the oil at all. And we could let everybody else fight it out.”
Ask who he talks to for military advice, Trump said he watches the news shows and cited former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton (”a tough cookie”) and retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs (”a good guy”) as two examples of people who impress him.
Contributing: The Associated Press