Giuliani tries to clarify Trump's immigration stance

Donald Trump still has to "refine and decide" certain aspects of his immigration proposal, including specifics on deportation, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani remarked Monday as he tried to clarify the Republican nominee's remarks.

"But," Giuliani quickly added during a discussion on "Fox & Friends," "it's pretty much decided."


"It will be pretty much the same thing as he always said. First of all, he is going to increase significantly the number of Border Patrol. Increase the number of immigration agents, for a specific purpose. Stop them at the border and arrest the people that are here illegally," Giuliani said. "Since there are 11 million, 12 million, 13 million, 14 million, 15 million, we don't know, I don't know how many illegals are here, he's going to start in the right way. He’s going to go after the most dangerous criminals first, then the less dangerous criminals second. And by the time we get there, then we'll see what our population is of non-criminal illegal immigrants."

He continued, saying, "And I think that's the point at which he has to decide, are there some that have to be sent back because they're on welfare, because they're not producing, because they're not — because they are questionable."

As far as whether some undocumented immigrants would receive a status "well short of" a path to citizenship or legalization, Giuliani acknowledged, "I don't know the answer to that."

"That's the debate. And I don't know if you can decide that until you get down to that number. The big objection that Republicans had throughout is, we want to do this in two stages," Giuliani said. "Stage number one, let’s get control of the border, number two, let’s get rid of the criminals and then number three we have a country that's so much calmer, a lot safer, and we have a country in which we can make more rational decisions — about what do we do about how many remains. It's your guess or mine as to how many that number is."

Trump is slated to deliver a speech on his immigration proposal Wednesday in Phoenix, after causing alarm in some circles by suggesting that he would be open to a "softening" of his position, particularly with respect to deportation and amnesty. Trump and his campaign have since said amnesty would not be under consideration.

"Well what we can expect is the clear things, for sure. He’s gonna build a wall. It’s gonna be a technological as well as a physical wall," Giuliani said, remarking that it would have technology "that can detect people five, six miles away" with the ability to detect people digging under the wall.

The wall, Giuliani continued, would not be "unlike the wall that was built in Israel, which Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu himself has told me was the most effective thing in securing their border that they’ve done in about 10 years."