More headlines: Donald Trump on Immigration
(Following are older quotations. Click here for main quotations.)
Coyotes out of business on very dangerous southern border
Republicans and Democrats must join forces again to confront an urgent national crisis. Now is the time for the Congress to end illegal immigration and put the ruthless coyotes, cartels, drug dealers, and human traffickers out of business.
This is a moral issue. The lawless state of our southern border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial well-being of all Americans. We have a moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our citizens.
This includes our obligation to the millions of immigrants living here today, who followed the rules and respected our laws. Legal immigrants enrich our Nation and strengthen our society in countless ways.
I want people to come into our country, but they have to come in legally.
Tonight, I am asking you to defend our very dangerous southern border out of love and devotion to our fellow citizens and to our country.
Source: 2019 State of the Union address to United States Congress
Feb 5, 2019
3,750 troops to prepare for onslaught of Mexican caravans
As we speak, large, organized caravans are on the march to the United States. We have just heard that Mexican cities, in order to remove the illegal immigrants from their communities, are getting trucks and buses to bring them up to our
country in areas where there is little border protection. I have ordered another 3,750 troops to our southern border to prepare for the tremendous onslaught. Meanwhile, working class Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal migration.
Source: 2019 State of the Union address to United States Congress
Feb 5, 2019
OpEd: early signs by 2008 of immigration resentment
It was out of some instinctive or idiot-savant-like political understanding that Trump had made this issue his own, frequently observing, "Wasn't anybody an American anymore?" In some of his earliest political outings, even before Obama's election in
2008, Trump talked with bewilderment and resentment about strict quotas on European immigration and the deluge from "Asia and other places."
(This deluge, as liberals would be quick to fact-check, was, even as it had grown, still quite a modest stream.) His obsessive focus on
Obama's birth certificate was in part about the scourge of non-European foreignness--a certain race-baiting. "Who were these people? Why were they here?"
Source: Fire And Fury, by Michael Wolff, p. 62
Jan 5, 2018
FactCheck: "Fire and Fury" ignored Trump's 2000 book
FactCheck on Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury": There is such a political storm over this book that OnTheIssues must point out Wolff's shallowness on the issues. A prime example is Wolff's analysis of Trump's core immigration stance. On page 62, Wolff
asserts that Trump expressed "bewildered resentment" of immigrants "in some of his earliest political outings, even before 2008."Wolff evidently is unaware that Trump wrote a policy book in 2000, The America We
Deserve, in his run for the Reform Party presidential nomination. Trump fully laid out his immigration stance: America first; make legal immigration hard; control borders against illegal immigrants.
Trump has no bewilderment; you might disagree
with Trump's stances, but they have remained unchanged for 18 years now. Wolff is particularly wrong in characterizing Trump's "earliest political outings" as around 2008--Trump was fully engaged in 2000. But people like Wolff weren't listening then!
Source: OnTheIssues FactCheck on "Fire And Fury, by Michael Wolff"
Jan 5, 2018
One year in: only 200 feet of prototype order wall built
Almost a year into Donald Trump's presidency, the border wall he passionately promoted throughout his election campaign amounts to eight prototypes, no more than 30 feet long each, sitting in a desert outside San Diego.No funding has been
appropriated by Congress to advance the project beyond the testing phase. "We're calling on Congress to fund the border wall, which we're getting very close to," Trump said Dec. 20 during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. "We have some
wonderful prototypes that have been put up. And I may be going there, very shortly, to look at them in their final form."
The White House didn't respond to requests for comment. Trump has occasionally vented frustration with the pace of progress on
the wall, but has nonetheless projected confidence that it will eventually be built. "We're going to get the wall," Trump said Dec. 8 at the White House. "If we don't get the wall, then I got a lot of very unhappy people, starting with me."
Source: Bloomberg News on Trump's promise on Border Wall
Dec 26, 2017
Strip federal grant money to sanctuary cities
Donald Trump has already signed a dozen wide-ranging executive orders, hoping to fulfill a number of his campaign promises. Trump signed the burst of orders within just his first three weeks to undo many of President Barack Obama's regulatory policies.
Here's an overview:Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States: Signed: Jan. 25, 2017
The order outlines changes to a few immigration policies, but most notably it strips federal grant money to so-called sanctuary cities.
In addition, the secretary of homeland security is ordered to hire 10,000 more immigration officers, create a publicly available weekly list of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and review previous immigration policies.
The order also creates an office to assist the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and calls on local and state police to detain or apprehend people in the United States illegally.
Source: NBC News on 2017 Trump Administration promises & actions
Feb 14, 2017
2015 campaign announcement focused on Mexicans and Muslims
It's about those crowds of young people who filled the Trump Tower auditorium in June 2015, interrupting with applause forty-three times as Trump announced his campaign with vicious denunciations of Mexicans, Muslims, and the media.
At the time, I thought that was incongruous for midtown Manhattan, a place not exactly known for xenophobia or supporting racist tirades.
A day later news broke that the crowd was not the voluntary outpouring that television viewers would reasonably have believed they were seeing. Many of those clapping were actors paid fifty bucks apiece.
So, the campaign that ended with Trump's winning the Electoral College vote despite losing the popular vote by a large margin began with fraud and deception.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump intro, by D.C.Johnston, p. XX
Aug 2, 2016
Mexican government is sending criminals across the border
Q: You have repeatedly said that you have evidence that the Mexican government is sending criminals across the border, but you have refused or declined to share it. Could you share your proof?
TRUMP: Border Patrol people that I talk to, they say this is what's happening. Because our leaders are stupid.
And the Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning. And they send the bad ones over because they don't want to pay for them. They don't want to take care of them.
Why should they when the stupid leaders of the United States will do it for them? And that's what is happening whether you like it or not.
Source: Fox News/Facebook Top Ten First Tier debate transcript
Aug 6, 2015
Building a wall will save money because it stops bad dudes
Q: Assuming President Trump is able to stop the flow of illegal immigration through building a wall or some parts of a wall, what do you think should be done with the estimated 11 million undocumented workers and their families already here?
Would you be open-minded about a path to citizenship? A: First of all--we have to stop it. We can do that with combinations of walls and Border Patrol. And it won't cost the kind of money--in fact, we will save money, because people that are coming
in here that shouldn't be coming in here illegally. We have some really bad dudes right here in this country, and we're getting them out and we're sending them back to where they came from.
And I don't mean Mexico; they come from all over. We have some real bad ones, and they're in our prisons that we're paying for.
Source: CNN SOTU 2015 interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls
Jul 26, 2015
OpEd: businesses & Republicans condemn anti-Mexico terms
Trump released a statement restating the controversial comments he made almost three weeks ago when he announced he was running for president: "What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people
into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.," Trump's statement said. Trump's comments have resulted in the termination of a number of his business relationships, but it wasn't until the past week that fellow
Republican candidates began to forcefully condemn his comments.Former Gov. George Pataki (R-NY) laid out what he calls are "practical" policy solutions for the issue of securing the southern U.S. border, as well as what to do with the millions of
illegal immigrants already living in the country. Trump "has tapped into a chord of people who do not want to see millions of people come here illegally, but that does not justify demonizing an entire group of people," said Pataki. .
Source: CNN.com 2015 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls
Jul 6, 2015
Make Mexico pay for wall with severe economics
Q: Why do we need a wall?A: You have people coming through the border that are from all over. And they're bad. I'm talking about people that are from all over that are killers and rapists.
Q: How exactly are you going to get Mexico to pay for
building a wall?
A: You force them because we give Mexico a fortune.
Q: So you would cut off business or impose tariffs unless they built the wall?
A: I would do something very severe unless they contributed or gave us the money to build the wall.
Source: CNN SOTU 2015 interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls
Jun 28, 2015
Democrats refuse to change asylum laws & loopholes
If the Democrats would change the asylum laws and the loopholes, which they refuse to do because they think it's good politics, everything would be solved immediately. But they refuse to do it. They refuse to do it.
If they change those, I say, I used to say 45 minutes. It's 15 minutes. If they changed asylum and if they changed loopholes everything on the border would be perfect.
Source: Meet the Press 2019 interview series
Jun 23, 2019
FactCheck: No, Obama didn't separate families at the border
Among the president's top 10 whoppers of 2018: OBAMA SEPARATED CHILDREN FROM THEIR FAMILIES AT THE BORDER."Remember this: President Obama separated children from families," Trump said in November 2018.
This is false. There was no widespread
Obama-era policy of separating parents and children. The Obama administration instead opted to detain families together, earning outrage of their own. Advocates said there were a handful of scenarios under the Obama administration where children
were separated from their parents because of fears of human trafficking, but reunification was speedy.
The president made this claim as a way to defend his own administration's policy that separated more than 2,600 migrant children from
their parents earlier this year--a policy he was forced to end after widespread public outrage and condemnation from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Source: NBC Fact Check on 2018 Trump Promises, "10 falsehoods"
Dec 20, 2018
Close deadly loopholes that allow in gangs like MS-13
For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities. They have caused the loss of many innocent lives.Tonight, I am calling on the Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13,
and other criminals, to break into our country. We have proposed new legislation that will fix our immigration laws, and support our ICE and Border Patrol Agents.
[OnTheIssues note: MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is an international criminal gang based
Source: 2018 State of the Union address
Jan 30, 2018
Revamp H-1B from just a cheap labor program
President Trump is set to sign an executive order on April 18, ordering agencies to revamp the H-1B visa program. The executive order will make it harder for tech companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. Although Trump
vacillated on the question of whether he supported the H-1B visa program as a candidate, he said repeatedly that he wanted American firms and American workers to carry out federal projects. The executive order prepares to make good on that promise.
Trump, who campaigned on an "America First" ideology, had promised to "end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program." His executive order would require the agencies to perform administrative reviews immediately and propose reforms to ensure
that the H-1B visas are awarded to the most skilled and highest paid workers, officials said.
Indian outsourcing firms currently receive the lion's share of the visas because they submit tens of thousands of applications to increase their chances.
Source: Washington Post on Trump Administration promises
Apr 17, 2017
Syrian refugees are a Trojan Horse
Q: Does the U.S. get involved in making a safe zone for Syrian refugees?TRUMP: I would help them economically, even though we owe $19 trillion. What I won't do is take in 200,000 Syrians who could be ISIS. I have been watching this migration.
They're mostly men, and they're strong men. They look like prime-time soldiers. Now, it's probably not true, but where are the women? You see some women. You see some children.
But for the most part, I'm looking at these strong men. So, you ask two things. Number one, why aren't they fighting for their country? And, number two, I don't want these people coming over here.
Two hundred thousand people? This could be the greatest Trojan horse. This could make the Trojan horse look like peanuts if these people turned out to be a lot of ISIS.
Source: CBS Face the Nation 2015 interview on Syrian Refugee crisis
Oct 11, 2015
Syrian refugee crisis partly our fault; but don't take any
Q: A few weeks back, you said we'd have to take some Syrian refugees in on humanitarian grounds. But just this week you seemed to reverse it. What changed?TRUMP: I saw the migration and it seems like so many men. There aren't that many women or childr
It looked like mostly men and they looked like strong men.
Q: Half the refugees are children.
TRUMP: We don't know where they're coming from. We don't know who they are. They could be ISIS. I understand the whole thing with migration.
It's a horrible thing. It should have never happened in the first place. We screwed up the Middle East so badly, with breaking up Iraq. We have so destabilized the Middle East. So I said there's no way they come in. If they do come in,
if I win for president, they're going out.
Q: Even the kids?
TRUMP: Look, Europe should take some probably, because you have the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar--some of the richest countries and they're not taking any in.
Source: ABC This Week 2015 interview on Syrian Refugee crisis
Oct 4, 2015
Page last updated: Jan 03, 2022