While several in the media are attempting to portray Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s response to NBC’s Kristen Welker regarding President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to mass deport people in the U.S. illegally as less than enthusiastic, the actual responses the South Dakota Republican gave during a Sunday interview are mostly positive.
During a segment, Welker said, “Let’s talk about the Republicans’ agenda. When I spoke to President-elect Donald Trump he said his mass deportation plan was his top priority. He wants to deport everyone who is here illegally. Do you support that plan to deport everyone who is here illegally?”
“Well I think certainly there are categories, people who have committed crimes. There are over a million people that the current administration had targeted for deportation. So I think that we have to take seriously the fact that there are a lot of people in this country today, over 10 million who came in over the last four years under the current administration’s policies, and many of whom are not here for good reasons,” Thune began.
“We know we apprehended people on the terrorist border on the watch list, and you have gang members and cartel members and all of the above. As we think about what those next steps are and, the first thing is securing that border and making sure that we change the incentive struck are so people are incentivized to come here illegally which they have been for the last four years,” Thune continued. “And do everything to ensure that the border personnel, the ICE agents and border agents have the resources that they need to do their job. Some of that means physical barriers, some of it is technological barriers, et cetera, and those will require resources, and some will require deportation of certain people who are here illegally.”
Welker responded: “In 2016, you said deporting everyone here illegally was not realistic. Have you changed your mind?”
“Again, I think you start, this will be, obviously, a process, and it will take resources obviously to get people to leave the country. We’ll have to make sure the administration has the resources they need to enable them to do that. Is it realistic to deport everybody?” Thune said. “I mean, there are a lot of people in this country who are here illegally, but I think they have identified already, and anybody who has committed a crime in the country ought to be on the list, and there are about a million, 1.4 million, I think, on the current administration’s list of people that need to be deported. So start with that, and then we will go from there, and we’ll figure it out. I think the administration, when they take office, these are decisions that obviously that they’ll have to make.”
Republicans won a congressional majority in large part by backing Trumps’s agenda, which, of course, includes deporting people who crossed illegally into the country. Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan, have repeatedly said the administration would first focus on criminal illegal aliens.
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.