Trump backers claim shift in his immigration rhetoric

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

As he turns his attention to the general election, Donald Trump is signaling that he is ready to tone down his fiery rhetoric on illegal immigration – at least behind closed doors.

At the same time, Republican officials appear eager to push him in a more moderate direction, telling Hispanics that he has abandoned his divisive primary pledge to deport the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally – even if Trump hasn’t said so publicly himself.

“Trump has already said that he will not do massive deportations,” Helen Aguirre Ferre, the Republican National Committee’s director of Hispanic communications, told reporters at a Spanish-language briefing at the party’s convention two weeks ago. Instead, she said, “he will focus on removing the violent undocumented who have criminal records and live in the country.”

It’s a statement that may come as a surprise to Trump’s loyal followers, many of whom were first drawn to Trump because of his hard-line views on immigration and border security. Trump has vowed to build a wall along the length of the southern border and use a “deportation force” to track down and deport anyone in the country illegally.

“You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely,” Trump said in a TV interview last fall. He estimated in a separate interview that the process would take between 18 months to two years.

But those who would like to see Trump move in a more-inclusive direction say that Trump has indicated that he no longer advocates that plan. As evidence, they point to several vague sentences from an interview Trump gave this summer to Bloomberg News during a trip to Scotland to visit his golf courses.

“President Obama has mass deported vast numbers of people – the most ever, and it’s never reported. I think people are going to find that I have not only the best policies, but I will have the biggest heart of anybody,” Trump told the outlet. Pressed on whether he would issue “mass deportations,” Trump responded: “No, I would not call it mass deportations.”

“We are going to get rid of a lot of bad dudes who are here,” he was quoted as saying.

It remains unclear whether Trump was taking rhetorical or ideological issue with the phrase, and Trump has not made similar comments at any point since. Asked how he would manage the deportations at a press conference in Florida on Wednesday, Trump said only, “We’re going to have a whole policy on that over the next three weeks.”

“Two or three weeks ago, [Trump] conceded in an interview in Bloomberg in which he said the term ‘massive deportation’ is not used by him, and it was planted by a journalist,” said the head of Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, Alfonso Aguilar, who recently signed a letter along with other Latino conservatives endorsing Trump.

Aguilar said that he had seen in Trump’s comments “something very interesting, which can be the beginning of an openness toward the center on immigration. He said he wants to remove only people with criminal records, not people without criminal records. It could be the openness toward a legalization.”

A similar interpretation has also developed among Hispanic and religious leaders who have met with Trump privately in recent months. Trump, they say, has been signaling that he is open to embracing a less-punitive immigration policy that focuses on “compassion” along with the rule of law.