During Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate, front-runner Donald Trump explained how his mass deportation proposal is not unprecedented and actually feasible, referencing a program by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s that Trump said was effective in deporting more than 1 million people to Mexico and points south.
“Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president, people liked him,” Trump said during the debate in Milwaukee. “‘I like Ike,’ right The expression. ‘I like Ike.’ Moved 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border. They came back.Moved them again beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south. They never came back.”
Trump did not call the program by its name, known then as “Operation Wetback,” but Trump’s last sentence saying “they never came back” drew a big laugh from the largely Republican audience.
