President-elect Donald Trump has announced plans to change immigration and citizenship as we know it.
In his first formal interview since his presidential election win, Trump sat down with Kristen Welker on NBC's "Meet the Press." He outlined his plans for day one as the next president of the United States, including a mass deportation of immigrants who entered the country illegally.
"I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back," he said.
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“You have no choice,” Trump added. “First of all, they’re costing us a fortune. But we’re starting with the criminals, and we’ve got to do it. And then we’re starting with the others, and we’re going to see how it goes."
While Trump has said any one of the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally may be deported when he takes office, certain groups are at greater risk than others.
Numbers sent to Congress this fall from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, show there are 662,566 non-citizens with criminal convictions or pending charges, largely for assault and drug offenses.
The most common crime listed for undocumented immigrants was "traffic offenses," a category that includes driving under the influence.
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Meanwhile, Trump said he also wants to end birthright citizenship, potentially through an executive order. But legal experts say such a move would likely draw legal challenges considering the Constitution says people born in the United States are legal citizens.
In the interview, Trump also segued into common grievances, hinting at the possibility of pardoning people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and prosecuting lawmakers who he called "political thugs" and "creeps" for investigating the event.
"For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail," Trump said.
