Secretary of State John Kerry speaks out about Donald Trump’s immigration plan
Nov 13, 2015, 6:00 AM
PHOENIX — Secretary of State John Kerry spoke out about the legitimacy of a proposed immigration plan that would involve a wall being built on the U.S.- Mexico border.
Kerry discussed the immigration plan proposed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Thursday, seemingly dismissing the possibility the fence would ever come to be.
“I think its a foregone conclusion that Mexico is not going to build that wall,” Kerry said in an interview with Zakaria.
During an interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly last July, Trump said as president he would force Mexico to pay for a border wall to prevent undocumented immigrants from coming into the U.S.
“Mexico is making a fortune off the United States…they’re killing us at the border,” he said in an interview with O’Reilly. “I’m gonna say, ‘Mexico, this is not going to continue, you’re going to pay for that wall,’ and they will pay for the wall.”
President Barack Obama also called Trump’s immigration plan unrealistic in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Thursday, citing high costs and un-American behavior as a handful of reasons.
“The notion that we’re gonna deport 11, 12 million people from this country…would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that,” Obama said in an interview with Stephanopoulos. “Imagine the images on the screen flashed around the world as we were dragging parents away from their children. Nobody thinks that that is realistic.”
During his presidential run in 2004, Kerry said in a Democratic primary debate that he supported an immigration plan that included the implementation of a guest-worker program, a crackdown of illegal hiring and earned legalization.