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Republican Donald Trump has made undocumented immigrants out to be one of the worst things on the face of the planet, but just four years ago, he held a starkly different view on the question of whether or not they should be deported.


In a 2012 interview on CNBC published by CNN on Sunday, Trump said he doesn’t believe in sending immigrants who have positively contributed to the country for years back across the border.

“You have people in this country for 20 years, they’ve done a great job, they’ve done wonderfully, they’ve done to school, they’ve gotten good marks, they’re productive,” the real estate mogul said in the interview. “Now we’re supposed to send them out of the country? I don’t believe in that.”


Trump, who in June 2015 launched his campaign by condemning Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and drug dealers, has long promised to build a southern border wall and at times pledged to create a deportation force to round up undocumented immigrants, regardless of how long they’ve lived in the U.S.