Trump pledges to deport all illegal workers from the US if elected

The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump, on Sunday showed once again that he remained unapologetic over his comments about illegal immigrants in the US and, moreover, that he was prepared to go even further.

Just two months after the real estate tycoon set off an avalanche of criticism by accusing Mexico of sending over “rapists” and “drug traffickers” to the United States, he presented a plan to deport all of the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented workers should he win his White House bid.

We have to keep the families together, but they have to go”

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press aboard his private plane, Trump reiterated his commitment to push the Mexican government to pay for a wall to keep illegal migrants from crossing the border and said he was ready to lead a campaign to attract the Republican Party’s most conservative wing.

His position is an especially delicate one for his Republican rivals, and for himself, in the event that he wins the nomination. During the 2008 and 2012 elections, Hispanic-Latino voters sent a clear message to the Republicans that their opposition to the immigration bill – which was passed in the Senate in 2013 but later died in the House – would hurt them at the ballot boxes in the future.

Trump’s hardline pledges to crack down on illegal migration would no doubt further alienate Latino-Hispanic voters.

After rescinding laws that give American citizenship to any child born in the United States regardless of their parents’ legal status, the billionaire said he would send back entire migrant families should he be voted into office.

“We have to keep the families together, but they have to go,” Trump told NBC.

In a 1,900-word policy paper posted on his campaign website, the Republican candidate said he would eliminate temporary residency permits given by the Obama administration to “dreamers” – those brought illegally to the United States at a young age – and modify the constitution to prevent children born to illegal migrants in the US from being granted citizenship.

In the document, he said he would force the Mexican government to pay for the border wall by charging additional fees on some US visas for Mexicans and increasing the costs of daily permits to cross the border legally.

“The Mexican government has taken the United States to the cleaners,” Trump wrote. “They are responsible for this problem, and they must help pay to clean it up. We will not be taken advantage of any more.”

The Mexican government has taken the United States to the cleaners. They are responsible for this problem”

Trump’s radical solutions to solving the illegal migration problem in the United States have met with rejection on both sides of the border. Earlier this summer, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim announced that he would cut his business ties with Trump while NBC and Spanish-language television network Univision canceled his organization’s telecast of the Miss USA pageant last month.

Trump also criticized his two nearest rivals – former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and current Florida Senator Marco Rubio – for their stance on immigration. He called Bush “a puppet” for supporting regulating undocumented workers while he attacked Rubio for voting in favor of the reform in 2013.

“The bill was nothing more than a giveaway to the corporate patrons who run both parties,” he wrote.

English version by Martin Delfin.