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Trump says ‘strong and powerful’ border will be top priority once he assumes office, ‘They’re not staying here’
Donald Trump vowed to remove millions of illegal immigrants living in the US throughout his campaign.
Donald Trump has asserted that border security will be his top priority after assuming office in January. “It’s not a question of a price tag,” the president-elect told NBC News. “It’s not — really, 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,” Trump added on Thursday, November 7. “There is no price tag.”
Trump vowed to remove millions of illegal immigrants living in the US throughout his campaign, and even teased plans for the “largest deportation effort in American history.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told New York Post last month that about 4.5 million illegal immigrants will be “first priority” for removal, explaining that those “who’ve already committed crimes” would be singled out. “They’re in the system now [for] shoplifting, or whatever it is … or [having] done things that are untoward or unlawful,” he stated. “We know where they are, we know what they’ve done, they’re here detained, they gotta go.”
‘We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful’
Meanwhile, Trump told NBC News, “We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful. “We have to — at the same time, we want people to come into our country. And you know, I’m not somebody that says, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in.”
Trump has maintained that he wants to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. However, he later went on to revise that imagery to include a “big fat, open beautiful door.”
“I started to see realignment could happen because the Democrats are not in line with the thinking of the country,” Trump said on Thursday. “You can’t have ‘Defund the Police,’ these kind of things … they don’t work, and the people understand that.”
Trump said he has “probably” spoken to 70 world leaders since he was projected to win, and later also had conversations with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. He added Harris “talked about transition, and she said she’d like it to be smooth as can be, which I agree with, of course.”
