After days of toggling back and forth on his immigration views_specifically on deportations_Donald Trump returned to his tough talk on Saturday, vowing that it will be his No. 1 issue should he win the presidency.
"From the first day in office, I promise the first thing I'm going to do, the first piece of paper I'm going to sign, is we're going to get rid of these people," Trump, addressing supporters at Sen. Joni Ernst's annual "Roast and Ride" gathering in Iowa, said of "criminal illegal immigrants" in the country.
The Republican nominee, reading from a teleprompter as he has done more frequently in recent weeks now, also reaffirmed that he would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Still, despite his comments on Saturday, Trump, who is trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, appears to be considering a shift in his position.
In a Fox News interview Wednesday, Trump expressed openness to being flexible about who he would deport, suggesting he might offer exemptions for those who have no criminal records and agree to pay back taxes.
On Thursday, in an interview on CNN, Trump noted that "you can't take 11 (million) at one time and just say, 'boom, you're gone."
During the GOP primary Trump called for mass deportations of all nearly 11 million people in the country illegally.
In response to his latest comments, some Republicans, such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, have said Trump's wavering could hurt his standing with his base supporters.
For Trump, Saturday was about stressing that he's not wavering on immigration _ particularly when it comes to immigrants in the country illegally who have criminal records. (He did not talk about the millions who have no criminal records.)
"We're going to get rid of the criminals and it's gonna happen within one hour of when I take office, we start," he boasted. "Bring them back where they came from."
