Trump says in immigration speech that 11 million in U.S. illegally are not a main issue

PHOENIX >> Donald Trump tried to move past a week of vacillating on immigration, his signature issue, by asserting in a speech Wednesday that the question of what to do with 11 million people in the U.S illegally is not central to the problem.

“Anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington,” Trump said to cheers from thousands of supporters here at the Phoenix Convention Center.

Rather, Trump said that President Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s policies are to blame for “countless American” deaths at the hands of immigrants in the country illegally. He said the main problem with the immigration system is that it serves the needs of wealthy donors, interest groups and politicians. He warned that Clinton was planning to broadly expand her powers if elected, in defiance of the Constitution, to grant increased “executive amnesty.”

Trump’s immigration plan mirrored his foreign policy slogan: America first.

“We will be fair, just and compassionate to all,” he said. “But our greatest compassion must be for our American citizens.”

Trump, who has gone back and forth on his prior pledge to use a special force to round up the 11 million immigrants in the country without authorization, tried to reframe the debate with a new plan that includes what he termed a deportation task force, but said it would focus on those who have committed crimes. That’s similar to Obama’s current policy.

Other parts of his plan, like adding 5,000 border patrol agents, echoes legislation that passed the U.S. Senate in 2013 that would have added 20,000 border agents, fourfold what Trump suggested. Trump was highly critical of that proposal during the Republican primary, singling out Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for his role in drafting it. The bill eventually died in Congress.

Other plans included his long-promised border wall. He did not specify whether it would be entirely a physical structure, which would be impractical and prohibitively expensive in many areas marked by natural geographic boundaries. He also reiterated his promise that Mexico would pay for the wall, something Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and other government officials have called a non-starter.

Trump’s speech capped a whirlwind day in which he made a last-minute stop in Mexico City to meet with Pena Nieto for an hour, intensifying attention on Trump’s sharp rhetoric on immigration and Mexican trade.

Trump’s immigration views rocketed him to the top of the GOP field and propelled him to the Republican nomination, but the issue has bedeviled him in the general election campaign. Only about 1 in 5 Latino voters supports him, according to a recent Fox News poll. Some strategists believe his sharp tone and unsparing policy proposals may also be dragging down his support among other groups of voters who recoil at the vision of rounding up 11 million immigrants who entered the country illegally.

Trump’s once-forceful views have grown muddy of late, as he has shifted between maintaining and what he referred to as “softening” his policy proposals.

Not only has Trump sold the issue of border enforcement as paramount to “having a country,” but he has also cast himself as an unwavering businessman who takes decisive action without the typical political calculation or waffling.

Trump delivered his speech in Arizona, the heart of some of the nation’s fiercest immigration fights but an unlikely place for a Republican to ease up on strong anti-immigration views. Droves of supporters began lining up outside the convention center in 102-degree heat, hours before Trump arrived.

Despite the focus on illegal immigration, the numbers are actually down. In fact, more Mexican immigrants and their children went back to Mexico from the U.S. between 2009 and 2014 than came to the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center.

Arizona is one of many traditionally conservative states in the West that has mainstream Republican strategists concerned about the GOP’s hard-line turn on immigration — both in this election and what it portends for the future.

Voters in Arizona have supported only one Democrat for president since 1952. But the state’s large and growing Latino population has put the state on the map for Democrats. Polls there show a tight race between Trump and Clinton.

So far, the polling elsewhere suggests that Trump has created doubt in voters’ minds about his position, and hasn’t reaped any significant benefit. In Wisconsin, for example, often a bellwether for presidential elections, a survey released Wednesday by the state’s best-known poll found that 47 percent of voters believed Trump had changed his position on how to handle immigrants in the country without legal authority. That compared with 39 percent who said his position had not changed and 13 percent who said they did not know.

The poll showed Trump’s overall support in the state stuck in the high 30s — it was 37 percent in the most recent poll, 36 percent in a survey in early August and 37 percent in July.

That tension — between pleasing the Republican base and expanding it — has played out in recent weeks within the Trump campaign.

Trump has whipsawed over whether he would truly attempt to deport the estimated 11 million immigrants who are here illegally, as he promised during the primary. At times, he has suggested he would focus on those who have committed crimes, a variation of Obama’s policy, which has faced harsh criticism from conservative commentators and voters.

Amid the wavering, Trump has fought charges that he now supports “amnesty,” a buzzword for hard-line immigration critics and one Trump used during the Republican primary to malign his rivals’ immigration policies.

Trump has insisted he would not retreat. But the sense of confusion has been magnified by Trump’s own actions, including a show of polling the room on the question during a Fox News town hall last week.

Hillary Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, released a statement Wednesday recounting Trump’s inflammatory language toward Mexican immigrants and his promise to deport millions “including children and U.S. citizens.”

“What ultimately matters is what Donald Trump says to voters in Arizona, not Mexico, and whether he remains committed to the splitting up of families and deportation of millions,” she said.