US President-elect Donald Trump is yet to be formally elected the president when the Electoral College votes him to power on December 19, but he is already showing his fangs. In an interview with US channel CBS News for their popular programme 60 minutes, the billionaire business tycoon-turned-politician has reportedly said he will immediately send back 3 million illegal immigrants who have criminal records.
Trump's statement is in line with his campaign promises, where he had repeatedly vowed to not only send back illegal or undocumented immigrants but also to ensure that there are stringent checks for when documented immigrants do get in. This, and several other of his similar statements are probably why there is currently an online campaign with millions of signatures that is urging the Electoral College to vote against Trump and for Hillary Clinton.
That may not be the outcome, as Trump clearly seems confident, and it is with this confidence that he said in the TV interview -- which is yet to be aired at the time of the filing of this report -- that he will not only deport illegal immigrants with criminal records, but also build the wall between the US and Mexico that he had promised in his campaign.
He said in the interview: "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we're getting them out of our country; they're here illegally."
Securing the border
He also said, in his trademark style: "After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that they're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that. But before we make that determination...it's very important, we are going to secure our border."
As for the wall between the US and Mexico, the President-elect seemed to have climbed down from his previous stance, when he had said that it would be a solid and "beautiful" wall, and that Mexico would pay for it. He said in the interview that there would indeed be a wall, but with "some fencing" at some of the places.
