"There's no amnesty, but we work with them,” Trump said of undocumented immigrants. | AP Photo Trump shifts on immigration: 'There's no amnesty, but we work with them'

Amid talk that he is softening his stance on illegal immigration, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reassured his supporters Wednesday night that there will be “no amnesty” for those in the United States illegally.

But Trump added that he has grown increasingly sympathetic on the campaign trail to the plight of individuals who have spent years and sometimes decades in the U.S. illegally but have lived otherwise upstanding lives.


Trump was asked by Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview scheduled to air Wednesday night whether he would amend his previous pledge to remove all illegal immigrants from the U.S. to include an exception for undocumented immigrants who have not committed other crimes.

"No citizenship,” Trump responded. “Let me go a step further — they'll pay back-taxes, they have to pay taxes, there's no amnesty, as such, there's no amnesty, but we work with them.”

“Now, everybody agrees we get the bad ones out,” he continued. “But when I go through and I meet thousands and thousands of people on this subject, and I've had very strong people come up to me, really great, great people come up to me, and they've said, ‘Mr. Trump, I love you, but to take a person who's been here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out, it's so tough, Mr. Trump.' I have it all the time! It's a very, very hard thing."

Trump returned to his tougher style when asked by Hannity about so-called “sanctuary cities,” where it is local policy not to prosecute an undocumented immigrant solely for his or her immigration status. Trump said such towns and cities are “protecting criminals” to the point where law enforcement officers “almost give up.”

"It's so hard for the police to — if somebody is protected between the sanctuary city nonsense. We got to get rid of the sanctuary cities, we're protecting these people,” Trump said. “We're protecting criminals. And the police, who are phenomenal people, they're at a point where they almost give up. They catch them, they have them, they know they did it and then they know nothing is going to happen. You know, OK, so if you're a killer and you're in this country, they go after you big league and it's tough. If you're a killer and you're an illegal immigrant, the police don't know what to do."

Asked about Trump's comments — and their more than passing resemblance to the immigration proposals of Jeb Bush — a spokesperson for the former Florida governor, Kristy Campbell, told POLITICO: "It is unsurprising that Donald Trump is finally faced with reconciling his immigration policy with reality, something Gov. Bush predicted last year."

Faced with an opponent working to soften his immigration stance, Hillary Clinton's campaign turned up its rhetoric recalling Trump's more hard-line stance from earlier in the campaign.

"Here's a message for Trump: Latinos can see through your cynical ploys," said Lorella Praeli, Hillary for America's National Director of Latino Vote. "No play of words can hide the fact that you've built your entire campaign on a dangerous agenda that seeks to demonize immigrants, deport 16 million people, build a giant concrete wall and send a deportation force into our communities."

