Donald Trump On Immigration Plans from Day 1: Interview Transcript

“They have to love our country” – Donald Trump

Here’s a transcript of the immigration-focused segment from Donald Trump’s December 9, 2024, interview with Kristen Welker on NBC, where he outlines his plans for Day 1 of a potential second presidential term:

Kristen Welker:

OK, let’s talk about mass deportation, one of your big agenda items.

You’ve talked about prioritizing people who have criminal histories-

Donald Trump:

Correct.

Kristen Welker:

But is it your plan to deport everyone who is here illegally over the next four years?

Donald Trump:

Well, I think you have to do it.

And it’s a, it’s a very tough thing to do.

But you have to have, you know, you have rules, regulations, laws.

They came in illegally.

You know, the people that have been treated very unfairly are the people that have been online for 10 years to come into the country.

And we’re going to make it very easy for people to come in in terms of they have to pass the test.

They have to be able to tell you what the Statue of Liberty is.

They have to tell you a little bit about our country.

They have to love our country.

They can’t come out of prisons.

We don’t want people that are in for murder.

So we had 11,000 and 13,000 different estimates, 13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years.

They’re walking down the streets.

They’re walking next to you and your family.

And they’re very dangerous.

Kristen Welker:

Thirteen thousand figure, I think, goes back about 40 years.

Donald Trump:

No, it doesn’t.

No, it’s within the three year period.

It’s during the Biden term.

Now, that was a fiction that they put that out.

This was done by the Border Patrol.

It’s 13,099.

It’s during the Biden period of time.

And these are murderers, many of whom murdered more than one person.

You don’t want those people in this country.

Kristen Welker:

But you’re saying something, sir, that’s significant.

I just, I just want to make sure I’m clear, which is that you’re saying, yes, you’re going to focus on the people with criminal histories.

But everyone who’s here illegally has to go.

Donald Trump:

I’m saying this.

We have to get the criminals out of our country.

We have to get people that were taken out of mental institutions and put them back into their mental institution, no matter what country it is.

Do you know that Venezuela, their prisons are at the lowest point in terms of emptiness that they’ve ever been?

They’re taking their people out of those prisons by the thousands and they’re drunk.

And just to get back, because I know exactly what you’re getting at.

Number one, we’re doing criminals and we’re going to do them really rapidly.

We’re getting the worst gang, probably with MS-13.

And the Venezuelan gangs are the worst in the world.

They’re vicious, violent people.

And you see what they’ve done in Colorado and other places.

They’re taking over, literally taking over apartment complexes and doing it with impunity.

They don’t care.

They couldn’t.

They just are.

They’re in the real estate business.

Kristen Welker:

You know, the local police say that is not the case in Colorado.

Donald Trump:

Oh, it’s totally the case.

I mean, I have it on tape.

Kristen Welker:

You don’t believe the local police?

Donald Trump:

I play it.

I used to play it at my rallies every single night.

No, they’re breaking into doors.

They’re taking over the building.

Kristen Welker:

But, sir, you raise the point- 

Donald Trump:

And, by the way, the police are afraid to do anything.

Kristen Welker:

You raise the point that the logistics are complicated.

You said it yourself.

Donald Trump:

Sure they are.

But everything’s complicated.

Kristen Welker:

Yeah, I mean, you need 24 times more ICE detention capacity just to deport one million people per year, not to mention more agents, more judges, more planes.

Is it realistic to deport everyone who’s here illegally?

Donald Trump:

You have no choice.

First of all, they’re costing us a fortune.

But we’re starting with the criminals and we’ve got to do it.

And then we’re starting with others.

And we’re going to see how it goes.

Who are the others?

Others are other people outside of criminals.

We have convicted murderers.

We don’t mean people that are even on trial.

We have people that have murdered numerous people are on our streets and in our farms.

And we have to get them out of our country.

Kristen Welker:

What about dreamers, sir, dreamers who were brought to this country illegally as children?

[Dreamers are undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.] 

You said once back in 2017 they, quote, shouldn’t be very worried about being deported.

Should they be worried now?

Donald Trump:

Um,

The dreamers are going to come later.

And we have to do something about the dreamers, because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age.

And many of these are middle aged people now.

They don’t even speak the language of their country.

And yes, we’re going to do something about that.

Kristen Welker:

What does that mean?

What are you going to do?

Donald Trump:

I will work with the Democrats on a plan and if we can come up with a plan.

But the Democrats have made it very, very difficult to do anything.

Republicans are very open to the dreamers, the dreamers.

We’re talking many years ago they were brought into this country.

Many years ago, some of them are no longer young people.

And in many cases, they become successful.

They have great jobs.

In some cases, they have small businesses.

Some cases, they might have large businesses.

And we’re going to have to do something with them.

Kristen Welker:

And you want them to be able to stay.

That’s what you’re saying.

Donald Trump:

I do.

I want to be able to work something out.

And it should have been able to be worked out over the last three or four years.

And it never got worked out.

You know, Biden could have done it because he controlled, you know, Congress to a certain extent.

Right.

He could have done something, but they didn’t do it.

I never understood why, because they always seem to want to do it.

But then when it comes down to it, they don’t.

I think we can work with the Democrats and work something out.

Kristen Welker:

Let me ask you about another group of people, the estimated four million families in America who have mixed immigration status.

So I’m talking about parents who might be here illegally, but the kids are here legally.

Your borders are- 

Donald Trump:

You’re talking about separation.

Kristen Welker:

Well, I mean, there are two aspects to this.

Your border czar, Tom Homan, said they can be deported together.

Donald Trump:

Correct

Kristen Welker:

Is that the plan?

Donald Trump:

Well, that way you keep the foot.

Well, I don’t want to be breaking up families.

So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.

Kristen Welker:

Even kids who are here legally.

Well, well, what you’re going to do if they want to stay with the father.

Look, we have to have rules and regulations.

You can always find something out like, you know, this doesn’t work.

That doesn’t work.

I’ll tell you what’s going to be horrible when we take a wonderful young woman, who’s with a criminal.

And they show the woman and she could stay by the law, but they show the woman being taken out or they want her out.

And your cameras are focused on her as she’s crying as she’s being taken out of our country.

And then the public turns against us.

But we have to do our job and you have to have a series of standards and a series of laws.

And in the end, look, our country is a mess.

We have the highest crime rate.

And during the debate, a man whose ratings have gone way down.

David Muir said to me, no, crime is because I had to debate three people, not one.

Debating one was easy.

Debating three was actually pretty easy, too, if you want to know the truth.

But David, David Muir said, the crime rates have gone down.

I said, no, they’ve gone up.

And then the following day, they released the crime rates and they were way up.

Kristen Welker:

Yeah.

The FBI statistics.

You’re talking about those FBI statistics-

Donald Trump:

Well, no, but he gave, he gave the wrong answer.

Kristen Welker:

-Which are confusing based on what you’re looking at.

Donald Trump:

But a lot of that is migrant crime.

Kristen Welker:

Let me ask you about another aspect of this.

Donald Trump:

You know, a lot of it’s migrant crime.

Kristen Welker:

Well, let me ask you about another aspect of this that I think a lot of people are really curious about.

I mean, three percent of the people who are here illegally have criminal histories.

But in your first administration, you had the zero tolerance policy where we did see family separation.

Donald Trump:

Yeah.

Kristen Welker:

You ended it.

The purpose of that, though, to some extent, and you talk about this at the time was to-

Donald Trump:

You also had it with Obama.

You didn’t know that.

Kristen Welker:

He didn’t have a zero tolerance.

Donald Trump:

And you also know he built the jails for children.

Kristen Welker:

He didn’t have a zero tolerance policy.

Donald Trump:

But in 2014, he built the jails.

You know that.

Kristen Welker:

I want to ask you about the zero tolerance policy.

He didn’t have a systemic we’re going to separate families.

Families were separated when parents were a threat to the kids.

Donald Trump:

We don’t have to separate a family.

Kristen Welker:

Let me ask you this.

Donald Trump:

Excuse me, Chris.

Kristen Welker:

Yeah.

Donald Trump:

We don’t have to separate families.

We’ll send the whole family very humanely back to the country where they came.

That way, the family is not separated.

Kristen Welker:

So no more family separations.

You’re not reviving.

Donald Trump:

It depends on the family.

The family may decide to say, I’d rather that dad go.

But and we’ll stay here.

And in which case they have that option.

Kristen Welker:

But you’re not going to revive your zero tolerance policy, which was put in place as a deterrent.

Is there any universe where you would bring that back, sir?

Donald Trump:

We need deterrence.

Look, ready.

When somebody comes here illegally, they’re going out.

It’s very simple.

When they come here illegally, they’re going out.

Now, if they come here illegally, but their family is here legally, then the family has a choice.

The person that came in illegally can go out or they can all go out together.

And that was made very clear by Tom Holman.

Kristen Welker:

So you’re not at this point in time planning to revive that zero tolerance policy where kids are separated-

Donald Trump:

Well, if you call it, I’m doing what I just told you I’m going to do.

You know, I don’t want to send the family out.

I don’t want to send anybody out.

But I’ll tell you, we have to, because otherwise we have no country.

If we don’t have borders and if we don’t have voting, good voting, fair voting, do you know they’re still counting votes in San Diego, California?

Listen, they’re still counting the votes.

This is almost four weeks.

They’re still counting the votes.

If we don’t have fair elections and honest voting and machines that work quickly, you know, if you had if you had paper ballots, every election will be over by 10 o’clock in the evening.

Kristen Welker:

Let me ask.

Donald Trump:

You understand what I’m saying?

Kristen Welker:

Well, let me before we get-

Donald Trump:

And you get a much more accurate before we get to all of that.

Kristen Welker:

Let me ask you about some of your other promises on this topic.

You promised to end birthright citizenship on day one.

Is that still your plan?

Donald Trump:

Yeah, absolutely.

Kristen Welker:

The 14th Amendment, though, says that, quote, “all persons born in the United States are citizens.”

Can you get around the 14th Amendment with an executive action?

Donald Trump:

Well we’re going to have to get a change. 

We maybe have to go back to the people, but we have to end it with the only country that has it.

Kristen Welker:

Through an executive action?

Donald Trump:

You know, we’re the only country that has it.

You know, if somebody sets a foot of just a foot, one foot, you don’t need to on our land.

Congratulations. You are now a citizen of the United States of America.

Yes, we’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous.

Kristen Welker:

Through executive action.

Donald Trump:

Well, if we can, through executive action, I was going to do it through executive action, but then we had to fix covid first, to be honest with you.

We have to end it.

It’s ridiculous.

You know, we’re the only country in the world that has it.

You know that?

Kristen Welker:

Well, 

Donald Trump:

Not one-

Kristen Welker:

What about the legal challenge?

Inevitable legal challenges that’ll come?

Donald Trump:

You know, we have thousands of judges.

Somebody walks onto our land and we have to now say, welcome to the United States.

They could be a criminal or not a criminal.

We release them into our country.

It’s called catch and release.

We release them into our country.

Wait just one second.

And now they get them lawyers and the lawyers are good lawyers and everybody has a lawyer.

And you know how many judges we have?

Thousands.

Thousands.

Now, here’s what other countries do.

They come into the land and they say, I’m sorry, you have to go.

And they take them out.

OK, with us, once they touch our land, we’re into litigation that lasts for years, costs us hundreds of billions of dollars.

We have judges and I’m sure they’re all honest, but I don’t know that for a fact.

You can imagine what’s going on with the judges.

But just so you because I have I have a lot of judges.

I tell you what, I know more about judges than any human being in history.

Look, we have judges.

Every time somebody puts two feet or even one foot on a piece of our land, it’s welcome to long term litigation.

Other countries, every other country, when somebody walks on and they see that they’re here illegally, they walk them off, they take them back to where they came from.

We have to get rid of the system.

It’s killing our country.

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You can see the convo from 14:51 – 26:02

Donald Trump’s stance on immigration, as expressed in this interview, emphasizes strict enforcement of laws, including mass deportation. He prioritizes deporting individuals with criminal histories, like murderers and gang members, but ultimately advocates for deporting all undocumented immigrants, citing a need for deterrence and border security. Families with mixed immigration statuses may face tough choices—either leave together or separate.

On Dreamers (undocumented individuals brought to the U.S. as children), Trump expresses openness to working with Democrats to create a solution allowing them to stay but blames prior administrations for inaction.

He also plans to end birthright citizenship, arguing it’s an outdated policy that could be addressed via executive action or legislative change. He criticizes the current legal and judicial process for immigrants, calling it inefficient and expensive.

For prospective immigrants, Trump highlights a preference for applicants who “love the U.S.,” understand its history, and meet stringent vetting requirements.