Some Republicans Try to Tone Down Trump’s Mass Deportation Threats

As President-elect Donald Trump doubles down on his mass deportation plan, some Republicans are trying to assuage fears amid growing questions of who will be forced out of the country.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Trump said, “It’s not a question of a price tag, we have no choice … When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here.”

But in prior interviews and on the campaign trail, Trump and others have not targeted the deportations to just those who have committed violent crimes.

In an April interview with Time magazine, he said his mass deportations would “start with the criminals that are coming in” and added he may deploy the military for an “invasion” of what he said was already 15 million immigrants — and could be 20 million — by the end of President Joe Biden’s term.

The prospect of mass deportations is generating fear and apprehension among families with noncitizen members and businesses that employ undocumented workers.

But some Republicans’ readings of Trump’s policy — which he has promised would bring about deportations at a scale never before seen in the U.S. — are more limited in scope.

Republicans in immigrant-heavy states have been suggesting he’ll prioritize or only focus on the worst criminals.

“I am sure that the Trump administration is not going to be targeting those people who have been here for more than five years that have American kids, that don’t have criminal records, that have been working in the economy and paying taxes,” Florida Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar said in a PBS interview. {snip}

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And Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in an NBC News interview Wednesday that Trump has “made clear that his priority is to deport dangerous criminals. People that are in this country and are criminals in their home country, or are committing crimes here, they will be the priority for removal from this country.”

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{snip} Trump has said repeatedly that he would conduct the largest deportation operation in U.S. history on the first day of his administration.

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The president-elect has also said he would withhold federal grants to police that don’t cooperate in his mass deportation plan as well as use the National Guard to carry it out. 

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