Alan Gomez

USA TODAY

Call it a pivot, a restart or just a "softening" of his stance, but pro-immigration groups are not impressed with Donald Trump's change in tone this week and his promise of new policies to handle the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

"I have seen over many years when politicians get to that 'uh-oh' moment when they realize they've gone too far and they're falling over a nativist cliff," said Angela Kelley, executive director of the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund. "It's too late to course correct. You just can't cover up with any amount of makeup the tattoo of xenophobia and racism that is on his forehead."

After a year of promising to build a border wall with Mexico and deport all of the nation's undocumented immigrants, Trump has seen his poll numbers with Hispanics plummet even lower than the 27% Mitt Romney received in the 2012 election. So this week, Trump said in a series of TV interviews that he will approach the issue in a more "humane manner."

He talked about a merit system for allowing immigrants into the country and hinted, in broad terms, at offering undocumented immigrants some kind of legal status. He said they would not be eligible for U.S. citizenship, but the shift was jarring for a candidate whose candidacy was based on often hard-line rhetoric on the issue since its launch more than a year ago.

Has Trump actually changed his stance on immigration? It's not clear

Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a Washington-based group that advocates for legal status for undocumented immigrants, called Trump's pronouncements minor "rhetorical shifts" that don't change his underlying goal of mass deportations.

Sharry said Trump's shift shows that the real estate mogul is paying at least some attention to the chorus of voices saying he has gone too far, including a Hispanic advisory council Trump's campaign put together to advise the nominee on that electorate. But Sharry said he remained skeptical that any true change will come since he has seen other Republicans in recent presidential campaigns go hard right on immigration during the primaries before moderating ahead of the November election.

"Trump's radicalism may have worked in the primaries to an extent, but he finally hit the proverbial wall in the general election," he said.

Pew poll: Americans divide on partisan lines on immigration

Ben Jealous, former president and CEO of the NAACP, said Trump's outreach may not even be targeted at Hispanic voters.

Jealous used the example of Trump's recent speech about the difficult situation facing African Americans in the United States. Trump met with supporters outside of Detroit and spoke at length about the troubles facing that community and how Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was a big part of the problem. But the real estate mogul delivered that speech in a suburb of Detroit to a mostly white audience.

Jealous said that shows how Trump wasn't really trying to win over black voters, but trying to soothe the concerns of white, moderate voters who worry that Trump may be too extreme for them. He said this week's statements about immigration follow the same trend — shoring up the base without really trying to win over a minority group.

"That's who they're trying to fire up," Jealous said.

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If Trump ends up following through on his promise to lay out a new, softer immigration policy, the group who may be most upset are his longtime supporters.

Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates for lower levels of legal and illegal immigration, said Trump's policies until now have largely mirrored what they've been fighting for. That's why it was such a shock for them to hear Trump this week opening the door for some undocumented immigrants to remain in the country so long as they pay back taxes.

"Of course we worry," Mehlman said. "We are opposed to providing them legal status."

But Mehlman echoed a common refrain heard from both supporters and opponents of Trump and even his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, that he may have just been speaking off the top of his head and will soon revert back to his original position.

"We're dealing with a candidate who has been confounding everybody for much of the past year," he said. "So we'll see what he says today."