WASHINGTON — Young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and now here illegally can “rest easy,” President Trump said Friday, telling the “dreamers” they will not be targets for deportation under his immigration policies.
Trump, in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, said his administration is “not after the dreamers, we are after the criminals.”
The president, who took a hard line on immigration as a candidate, vowed anew to fulfill his promise to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. But he stopped short of demanding that funding for the project be included in a spending bill Congress must pass by the end of next week in order to keep the government running.
“I want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall,” Trump said in the Oval Office interview. Asked whether he would sign legislation that does not include money for the project, he said, “I just don’t know yet.” Throughout the campaign, he had firmly and repeatedly guaranteed that Mexico, not U.S. taxpayers, would pay for the wall.
Eager to start making progress on other campaign promises, Trump said he would unveil a tax overhaul package next week – “Wednesday or shortly thereafter” – that would include a “massive” tax cut for both individuals and corporations. He would not provide details of rate proposals or how he planned to pay for the package but asserted the cuts for Americans will be “bigger, I believe, than any tax cut ever.”
Congressional Republicans seemed caught off guard by Trump’s announcement and did not appear to have been briefed on the details of the White House’s forthcoming plan.
Trump spoke with the AP ahead of his 100th day in office.
He panned that marker as “artificial.” Still, the White House is eager to tout progress on the litany of agenda items he promised to fulfill in his first 100 days, despite setbacks.
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