Story highlights Raul Reyes: Trump raises hopes he's interested in immigration reform, then dashes them in his speech to Congress

He says this is the most anti-immigrant president in modern history -- and his actions speak louder than his words

Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and member of the USA Today board of contributors and writes frequently for CNN Opinion. The views expressed here are solely his.

(CNN) Call it the great immigration fake-out. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he was interested in helping pass an immigration reform bill, provided there was "compromise on both sides." CNN reported that Trump was interested in a bill that could grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants.

While Trump stopped short of endorsing a path to citizenship for the undocumented, this was nonetheless a startling break with his past hard-line stance on immigration. A senior administration official also told journalists that Trump would be open to legalization for undocumented immigrants who have not committed serious or violent crimes.

Then came Trump's address before Congress, and his true intentions were revealed. His talk of immigration reform, we now know, was just that: Talk. At best, his earlier statements about immigration reform were a publicity stunt designed to gin up interest (and ratings, which Trump is obsessed with) in his speech. At worst, this bait-and-switch was a cruel hoax perpetrated on millions of undocumented people who might have briefly hoped for a reprieve from possible deportation.

In fact, Trump's speech offered little meaningful policy on immigration, beyond conflating immigrants with crime and misrepresenting key facts underlying illegal immigration. Tellingly, there was no mention of offering legalization to anyone.

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"As we speak tonight," Trump said in his speech, "we are removing gang members, drug dealers, and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our innocent citizens." But this claim is undermined by the government's own data . Statistics from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement show that while the recent round of ICE raids has targeted "removable aliens" who have been convicted of a variety of crimes and misdemeanors, the largest single category of people arrested were "noncriminals."