Doubts Grow About Donald Trump’s Dedication to Deporting 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants

Would a President Donald Trump really attempt to deport from the United States 11 million undocumented people? A series of conflicting reports and equivocations cast doubt on his stance.

The Guardian reports:

Following the shakeup of Trump’s campaign leadership last week, the businessman has held a series of rallies with explicit overtures to minority voters – the same Americans whom he had unnerved for over a year, for instance by calling Mexican migrants “rapists”, wavering on whether to disavow a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and denigrating the Muslim parents of an army captain who was killed in Iraq.

“The GOP is the party of Abraham Lincoln,” he told a mostly white crowd in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Saturday night. “I want our party to be the home of the African American voter once again.”

Earlier that day, he spoke with Latino leaders in a private meeting that produced conflicting reports. People who attended the meeting told Univision and BuzzFeed Trump had hinted he was open to pathways to legal status for some undocumented people. …

On Sunday, one of Trump’s staunchest allies, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, made a similarly vague defense of the candidate.

“What I’m certain about is that he did not make a firm commitment yesterday,” Sessions told CBS. “But he is absolutely committed to the first thing that has to be done, and that’s end the lawlessness to protect Americans from danger.

“But he did listen and he’s talking about it,” the senator added.

Pressed about whether that meant the deportation of 11 million people, Sessions said: “He’s wrestling with how to do that. People that are here unlawfully, came into the country against our laws, are subject to being removed.”

Trump trails his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, by large margins in the swing states of Colorado, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. One recent poll shows him losing 91 percent to 1 percent nationally among African-American voters, and another has him receiving 0 percent of their vote in two battleground states. A national Fox News poll showed Clinton with a 46-point lead among Hispanic voters.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.