Trump says he'll deport 2-3 million immigrants on '60 Minutes'
Donald Trump and Paul Ryan have two very different messages for millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States.
President-elect Trump says he plans to immediately deport 2 million to 3 million people once he's in the White House, according to an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes.
House Speaker Ryan says lawmakers aren't planning a "deportation force" and will spend their initial energy on securing the U.S-Mexico border.
"I think we should put people's minds at ease," Ryan told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday's State of the Union show. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump's not planning on that."
The two Republicans have been at odds throughout Trump's controversial run for the U.S. presidency.
Ryan has sought to uphold the GOP's traditional conservative principles, while Trump has bucked the Republican Party line in favor of a more extreme (and expensive) agenda.
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"What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump told 60 Minutes in the episode airing Sunday at 7 p.m. ET.
Trump's numbers rely on some fairly fuzzy math.
His claim that 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants have criminal records comes from a 2013 report by the Department of Homeland Security, which found there were 1.9 million "removable criminal aliens."
That figure refers to a broader group of people that includes not just unauthorized immigrants but also people who are lawful permanent residents or those with temporary visas, Washington Post fact-checkers reported in September.
The actual number of undocumented people with criminal convictions might be closer to about 820,000 individuals, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
The Obama administration deported more than 2.5 million people through immigration orders between 2009 and 2015, according to federal data.
After Trump deports those immigrants with criminal records, and once he secures the border with Mexico, Trump says he'll next decide how to address the "terrific" but undocumented people living in the United States.
"We're going to make a determination on the people that they're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that," Trump told 60 Minutes.
In the interview, Trump said he still plans to build a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border. But some of that structure could be part wall and "some fencing."
“For certain areas I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate,” Trump said in the interview. “I’m very good at this, it’s called construction."
Since Trump's surprising victory last week, the Mexican government has reiterated that it will not pay to build the wall, as Trump has insisted will happen.
Speaking with CNN's Jake Tapper, Ryan deflected questions about whether he'd support Trump's plans to impose hefty tariffs on imports from Mexico and other countries to help cage in the United States.
Ryan said instead he supports tax reforms to address immigration challenges "without any adverse effects -- without any collateral damage to the economy," he told CNN.
Topics Donald Trump Immigration
Maria Gallucci was a Science Reporter at Mashable. She was previously the energy and environment reporter at International Business Times; features editor of Makeshift magazine; clean economy reporter for InsideClimate News; and a correspondent in Mexico City until 2011. Maria holds degrees in journalism and Spanish from Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College.
