Immigration attorney calls for clarification on White House, Homeland Security immigration orders

DENVER -- President Donald Trump is vowing again to deport illegal immigrants in the U.S. who have committed crimes, and a Colorado immigration attorney says the whole situation is confusing.

Trump told a gathering of conservatives Friday that "as we speak today, immigration officers are finding gang members, drug dealers and criminal aliens and throwing them the hell out." 

That statement came just a day after Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly pledged in Mexico that the United States won't enlist its military to enforce immigration laws and that there will be "no mass deportations."

“I think it’s pretty clear that there is a lot of confusion going on and a lot of mixed signals coming out of the administration in terms of what these executive orders and new policies are going to mean,” immigration attorney David Kolko told Anne Trujillo on this week’s Politics Unplugged. “I think they are having to back step quite a few times when misstatements are coming out of either the White House or the administration, so for the most part it’s creating quite a lot of confusion about how these changes are going to be implemented.”

Kolko says the executive orders coming out of the White House and the memos coming out of the Department of Homeland Security are laying the groundwork for the potential implementation of a wide spread or mass deportation effort by the administration. He says there needs to be a lot of clarification.

“I think one thing the administration could do is come out and say more clearly ‘we’re going to prioritize these people’ and we’re not going to be arresting and detaining people that have caused harm in this country that are not a risk to national safety or public safety in our country and people who have been here a very long time,” Kolko added.

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Politics Unplugged airs Sundays at 4 p.m. on Denver7.