Leading Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump took a break from cyberbullying his fellow candidates to finally waddle into the realm of immigration policy — and it wasn’t pretty.
Not only did Trump slump to the right of Mitt Romney by advocating for mass deportation of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, but he also claimed that after they were all gone, he’d set up an “expedited” process to get the “good ones” back in.
When pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash for details, Trump failed to clarify how he’d round up a population the size of Ohio for mass deportation (maybe a couple trips on the Trump jet?), or what the magical process to find the “good” immigrants scattered all over the world might be.
Of course, considering how many of Trump’s businesses and developments would grind to a halt with no immigrants left to run them, Trump would probably have plenty of time to figure out those pesky details.
Trump’s “plan” earned the ridicule of immigration advocates and media alike, particularly from Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who in a string of blistering tweets “explained why the strategy Trump is laying out would cost him votes not only among Hispanics, but likely result in his losing the election itself”:
Romney’s idea for undocumented:Self-Deportation.Trump’s: “We got to move ’em out.” How do you deport 11 M? By bus, by plane? With the army?
— JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) July 30, 2015
Trump:“Deport all undocumented immigrants…then allow the ‘good ones’ to reenter” How do you detain and deport 11M men, women and children?
— JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) July 30, 2015
Just imagine this: ICE, the police and the U.S. army detaining and deporting 11M? “We’ve got to move them out”, said Trump. How?
— JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) July 30, 2015
This is how you lose the Hispanic vote. Romney: “Self-deportation” (Got 27% on Latino vote). Trump: “You’ve got to move them out” ( ?? %)
— JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) July 30, 2015
As Fusion writes, Trump has so far refused to sit down for an interview with the journalist, who has taken both President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner to task for failing to pass comprehensive immigration reform during the past few years.
Maybe Trump has realized he’s already lost Ramos, and the Republican Party as a whole is dangerously close to losing him, too. As a Republican advisor for George W. Bush once famously said about the Univision anchor beloved by millions of Spanish-speaking Americans:
“Remember what L.B.J. said, ‘When you lose Walter Cronkite, you’ve lost the war’? [Ramos is] not only a journalist, he’s become the voice of the Latino constituency. And that’s where Republicans have to worry. You don’t want to lose Jorge Ramos.”
Avoiding Univision and Ramos may save Trump some face as he demonizes millions of Latinos and immigrants, but, as Ramos states, Mitt’s landslide defeat in 2012 should show Republicans they can’t run away forever.
