This post has been updated.
Donald Trump on Wednesday morning explained that he will deport undocumented immigrants from the United States if elected president with a “deportation force” that removes people “humanely.”
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump said that the U.S. has conducted mass deportations in the past while discussing his plan to boot all undocumented immigrants from the country.
“Look, we have to do what we have to do, and Ike did it and other people have done it,” he said, alluding to Dwight Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” in the 1950s, a model Trump has cited before. The former president deported hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants and dropped them off in remote areas of Mexico without the means to travel home.
“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Trump how he would remove individuals from the U.S.
“You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely,” he said.
Trump later added that some of those who are deported will be able to re-enter the country legally.
“There’s going to be a big beautiful nice door,” he said. “People are going to come in and they’re going to come in legally. But we have no choice. Otherwise, we don’t have a country. We don’t even know how many people. We don’t know if it’s 8 million or if it’s 20 million.”
Hillary Clinton on Wednesday afternoon slammed Trump’s proposed “deportation force” as “absurd, inhumane, and un-American.”
Watch part of the “Morning Joe” interview via MSNBC:
