When Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz talked to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Monday about his plans to deal with illegal immigration, it didn’t take long for some pundits to report they had heard it all before — except not from Cruz.
Cruz “has taken a page from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign playbook,” The Huffington Post reported Tuesday.
“Cruz changes tune on rounding up undocumented immigrants,” ran the CNN headline on Cruz’s most recent comments.
“We should enforce the law,” Cruz said in discussing the 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the country. “Federal law requires that anyone here illegally that’s apprehended should be deported.”
When asked whether he would actively look for and deport illegal immigrants, Cruz replied, “You better believe it.”
This would be accomplished, Cruz said, by implementing a stronger biometric entry and exit system so that the government would have a better idea of who is overstaying their visas.
“Ted Cruz only talks tough on immigration now because he did so badly in (South Carolina). He is in favor of amnesty and weak on illegal immigration,” Trump tweeted Tuesday.
In January, Cruz opposed Trump’s plan to deport all illegal immigrants.
“I don’t intend to send jackboots to knock on your door and every door in America, that’s not how we enforce the law for any crime,” he told CNN then.
During his Monday interview with O’Reilly and the January interview with CNN, Cruz made it clear that he would only deport those who were “apprehended.”
O’Reilly asked Cruz how he would locate and deport illegal immigrants.
“That’s what ICE exists for. We have law enforcement who looks for people that are violating the laws, that apprehends them and deports them,” Cruz said.
h/t: TheBlaze
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