Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Friday said that if he is elected to power all the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, which includes some 300,000 people from India, would have to go back and then enter the US through a legal process. "We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out. Some will come back, the best, through a process. They have to come back through a process, and it may not be a very quick process, but I think that's very fair, and very fine," Trump said, participating in the fierce Republican presidential debate here.
The real estate billionaire's comments came head of "Super Tuesday" on March 1, when 11 states including Cruz's huge home state of Texas go to the polls in perhaps the most consequential voting day of the 2016 primary campaign. However, several of his presidential rivals including the two closest and bitter rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz berated Trump over his immigration positions and doubted the practicality of such a move. But Trump insisted that he would be able to achieve his goal as people would go back on their own, which he described as self-deportation.
"They're going to get in line with other people. The best of them will come back, but they're going to come back through a process," he said, adding that self-deportation would be successful. "Self-deportation is people are going to leave as soon as they see others going out. If you look at Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, they started moving people out,” he said.