A day after Donald Trump met with a group of Latino supporters, top aides suggested Sunday that the GOP nominee may be reconsidering his signature campaign promise to round up and deport 11 million people who are in the country illegally.
His new campaign manger, Kellyanne Conway, was asked on CNN’s "State of the Union" if Trump still wants a “deportation force” to remove everyone in the country illegally, as he has vowed repeatedly on the campaign trail.
“To be determined,” she said.
Trump is “wrestling” with how to remove those in the country illegally, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a close advisor to Trump on immigration matters, said on CBS’s "Face the Nation."
Apprehending and removing the estimated 11 million people who either entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas would cost about $400 billion and could reduce U.S. gross domestic product by $1 trillion, according to a study released this year by the free-market think tank American Action Forum.
The aides' comments were the latest sign that Trump's newly installed management team may be trying to broaden his appeal to stem his steady fall in the polls with less than three months until election day.
Trump has never explained how he intended to find, detain and deport millions of people, many of whom have built businesses and families in the U.S., or how he would pay for it even if it passed judicial scrutiny.
He has compared his proposal to "Operation Wetback," a controversial removals program carried out in 1954 under President Dwight Eisenhower. More than 1 million people were apprehended, mostly from border areas in Texas and California, and sent back to Mexico.
Still any easing of Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration — which also includes building a wall along the border with Mexico and temporarily banning Muslim immigrants — could alienate some of his most ardent supporters.
After a year of using harsh rhetoric against Latinos — from calling Mexican migrants rapists to repeatedly attacking a federal judge as unfair because his family was from Mexico — polls show Trump faces intense opposition among Latinos.
His campaign thus has moved in recent days to soften his edges and to try to shift attention past the turmoil caused by the reshuffling of his top staff last week.
In Charlotte, N.C., Trump announced “regret” that some of his comments — he didn’t say which ones — may have caused personal pain. In Fredericksburg, Va., he said the GOP must “do better” to reach out to African American voters.
And in New York City on Saturday, Trump told his campaign’s newly named Hispanic advisory council that he wants to find a “humane and efficient” solution to deal with illegal immigration.
He “did not make a firm commitment” to the group on how deportations would work, Sessions said.
Trump is expected to speak about immigration policy Thursday at a campaign event in Colorado. Conway say he will be more specific on his immigration plan “as the weeks unfold.”
"What he supports is to make sure that we enforce the law, that we are respectful of those Americans who are looking for well-paying jobs and that we are fair and humane for those who live among us in this country," Conway said.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has called for providing a pathway for some of the people in the country illegally to gain legal status.
A bipartisan immigration reform bill that would have achieved that goal passed the Senate in 2013 but died in the Republican-led House.
