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Trump repeats tough immigration policy

Xinhua, August 24, 2016 Adjust font size:

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday night repeated his immigration policy of building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and speeding up deportations of illegal immigrants.

Speaking at a rally in the Texas capital city of Austin, Trump pledged to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, make Mexico pay for it, unleash federal border patrol officers and, first and foremost, adhere to the rule of law -- a clear and disapproving reference to U.S. President Barack Obama's executive orders protecting certain immigrants from deportation, according to local daily the Dallas Morning News.

In a Fox News taping in Austin, Trump said: "We are going to build a wall. Yeah, 100 percent. It's so simple."

"(Former U.S. President George W.) Bush and even Obama sent people back so we can be more aggressive with that, but we can follow the laws," he said.

The Republican presidential candidate, however, sounded more sympathetic to hard-working immigrants who entered the United States illegally but have been since law-abiding and productive.

Asked if he would accommodate those people if he is elected president, Trump said that he would try.

Describing illegal immigration as a "tremendous problem," Trump said that "we want people to come into this country, but we want them to come in legally."

When asked if illegal immigrants "who have worked hard, who have been here a long time" would be sent back to the country they came from or if he would "reconsider them," Trump said "we are going to follow the laws. We're going to see where people are, we're going to see how they've done."

He spoke vaguely of creating a "merit system" for evaluating undocumented immigrants.

It is Trump's second trip this summer to Texas. In addition to his Fox News taping and a rally later Tuesday in Austin, he also held fundraisers in the northern Texas city of Fort Worth and Austin.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry attended Trump's fundraisers, but incumbent Governor Greg Abbott and most Texas members of Congress were absent. Endi