WASHINGTON – Donald Trump is backing away from his call for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
If he wins, the Republican presidential nominee said, he would do "the same thing" as President Obama in prioritizing the removal of criminals residing in the U.S. illegally, but "perhaps with a lot more energy."
On Tuesday night in Austin, Texas, Trump suggested that he is open to "softening" laws dealing with immigrants in the country illegally.
Taping a town hall for Fox News, Trump was asked by Sean Hannity if he would change current laws to accommodate law-abiding citizens or longtime residents who have raised children in the U.S.
"There certainly can be a softening because we're not looking to hurt people," Trump said. "We are going to follow the laws of this country."
Trump appears to be heeding allies' long-standing advice to soften his stance on deportations, which they worry is toxic to Hispanic voters, now that he faces Democrat Hillary Clinton — and troubling poll numbers — in a general election fewer than 80 days away.
His move raised the hackles of some conservatives who see it as a step toward amnesty, but it's not clear his bid to broaden support will cost him many core supporters.
"The first thing we're going to do, if and when I win, is we're going to get rid of all of the bad ones," Trump said in another Fox News interview.
"As far as everybody else, we're going to go through the process," he said. "What people don't know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country; Bush the same thing. Lots of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. Well, I'm going to do the same thing."
Obama has deported more people than any prior U.S. president, leading one immigrant rights advocate to label him the "deporter in chief." Trump's alignment with Obama about deportation priorities is a departure from the Republican's statement a year ago that all the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. "have to go" and that a "deportation force" could handle the job in as little as two years.
He intends to reverse Obama's move granting deferred action and work permits to undocumented people, said national policy director Stephen Miller.
"Mr. Trump was merely saying he would use the laws all presidents have had at their disposal to effect removals," Miller said, "only he would not suspend some laws in preference for others but enforce them all."
After the shift, Trump quickly faced charges that he backs a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
"Trump's stated position in the last 24 hours is utterly mind-boggling," warned Rick Tyler, a former spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. "If he gets tagged with the amnesty label, it's over. He's going to lose a huge portion of what has up until now been his core support."
The "amnesty" label has seriously damaged the national political prospects of Republicans like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who voted for a path to citizenship in 2013 before backing away from it.
Yet even prominent immigration restrictionists, who would like to seal the border and cut legal immigration levels, aren't clamoring for expulsion of undocumented people en masse.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said Trump should avoid any discussion of what to do about undocumented immigrants until steps are taken to stop their flow into the U.S.
"He's playing the other side's game," Krikorian said. "The answer should be, 'You don't even have any business asking that question now.' You don't debate how you're going to bail out the boat until you plug the hole."
Trump hasn't publicly wavered on his opposition to granting undocumented immigrants legal status. He is also holding firm on his promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and his proposal to slash the flow of legal immigration.
Democrats and immigrant rights activists are skeptical. An aide to Clinton, who proposes a path to citizenship through legislation and executive leniency on deportation beyond what Obama has offered, said Sunday as Trump's shift was coming into view that the campaign believes his plan "remains the same as it's always been: tear apart families and deport 16 million people from the United States."
America's Voice founder Frank Sharry dismissed Trump's shift as pure rhetoric.
"Trump may be adopting an Obama-like approach to deportations, or he may be adopting a public relations strategy that sounds more reasonable than his talk of mass roundups with a deportation force. My guess is that it's the latter," Sharry said in an e-mail.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
