President-elect Donald Trump spoke broadly about his plans for mass deportations, saying that families with undocumented parents and U.S.-born children would be deported together because he “doesn’t want to break up families.”
“So the only way you don’t break up the family is to keep them together and send them all back,” Trump said to Kristen Welker on Sunday’s episode of “Meet the Press.”
“Even kids who are here legally?” Welker asked.
“Well, what you have to do if they want to stay with their father – look, we have to have rules and regulations,” Trump said.
Peter Kramer/NBC via Getty Images
Welker asked Trump about the approximately four million mixed-status families in America, where some family members have legal status and others are undocumented.
Trump’s response mirrors that of his “border czar,” Tom Homan, who in a “60 Minutes” interview said in October: “Families can be deported together,” in response to a question about how mass deportations can be carried out without separating families.
Later in the “Meet the Press” interview, he emphasized the idea that families would not be separated.
‘We send the entire family back to the country they came from in a very humane way. That way the family is not separated,” he said. “The family may decide to say, ‘I’d rather Dad go, and we stay here.’ And in that case they have that option.”
Trump appeared to take a softer stance toward “Dreamers,” the hundreds of thousands of people brought to the country as children by undocumented parents and protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
“The Dreamers come later, and we have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people who were brought here at a very young age,” Trump said.
He said he wanted to “work with Democrats” on a plan to let Dreamers stay.
Also in the interview, Trump promised to use executive action to end birthright citizenship, something enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. When asked if that’s even possible, he said, “Well, we’ll have to change it.” Maybe we should go back to the people. But we have to put an end to it.” He wrongly said that America is the only country that has the birthright. about three dozen countriesincluding Canada and Mexico, offer birthright citizenship.
During Trump’s 2024 campaign, he promised to deport undocumented immigrants living in the United States, saying he would focus on “violent criminals” — but apparently that meant deporting the country’s roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants are all part of that group.
In September, Trump said at a campaign rally that deporting undocumented immigrants would be a “bloody story.” His allies have said prison camps will be needed to deport immigrants.
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In 2016, Trump said that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback,” which was named after a slur and reportedly deported 1 million immigrants in 1954, “a very effective chapter,” according to “some people.”
Sunday’s interview on “Meet the Press” was Trump’s first as president-elect.
Trump also spoke about Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, whom Trump plans to nominate for secretary of defense. Hegseth has been accused of rape and drinking on the job, and his mother once called him a “woman abuser.” Trump said Hegseth has a ‘great track record’.