President-elect Donald Trump at a meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday. Thomson Reuters President-elect Donald Trump told "60 Minutes" in an interview set to air Sunday night that he planned to deport or jail 2 to 3 million immigrants living in the country illegally upon taking office.

"What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million — we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump said in the interview, according to a preview released by CBS.

"But we're getting them out of our country. They're here illegally," he said.

Seeming to soften his rhetoric regarding one of his earliest campaign promises, however, Trump did not commit outright to deporting the estimated 8 million other immigrants thought to be living in the US illegally.

"After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that they're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people, but we are going to make a determination at that," he said. "But before we make that determination ... it's very important, we are going to secure our border."

Trump also seemed to tone down his plan to secure the US's southern border with a wall by telling "60 Minutes" that the wall would include "some fencing."

President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2014, deported 2.5 million immigrants living in the country illegally, according to government data, substantially more than George W. Bush did in his eight years in office.