Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were finally asked about immigration during the third and final Presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada last night.
Below is a video of the complete exchange, as well as some selected text from Clinton’s remarks, where she discusses Karla — the US citizen daughter of undocumented immigrants — and her plan to introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship during her first 100 days in office if elected:
“I was thinking about a young girl I met here in Las Vegas, Karla, who was very worried that her parents might be deported because she was born in this country but they were not. They work hard and do everything they can to give her a good life. And you’re right, I don’t want to rip families apart. I don’t want to be sending parents away from children. I don’t want to see the deportation force that Donald has talked about in action in our country. We have 11 million undocumented people. They have 4 million American citizen children — 15 million people. He said as recently as a few weeks ago in Phoenix that every undocumented person would be subject to deportation.
Now, here’s what that means. It means you would have to have a massive law enforcement presence where law enforcement officers would be going school to school, home to home, business to business, rounding up people who are undocumented, and we would then have to put them on trains, on buses, to get them out of our country. I think that is an idea that is not in keeping with who we are as a nation. I think it’s an idea that would rip our country apart. I have been for border security for years.
I voted for border security in the United States Senate. And my comprehensive immigration reform plan of course includes border security. But I want to put our resources where I think they’re most needed — getting rid of any violent person, anybody who should be deported, we should deport them. When it comes to the wall that Donald talks about building, he went to Mexico. He had a meeting with the Mexican president. Didn’t even raise it. He choked, then got into a Twitter war because the Mexican president said, “We’re not paying for that wall.”
So I think we are both a nation of immigrants and we are a nation of laws and that we can act accordingly. That’s why I’m introducing immigration reform within the first 100 days with a path to citizenship.”