Cutting the Cost of Living in the Country Historic Action by Trump - Karoline Leavitt, Press Secretary, Whitehouse
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00:00President is open to deporting individuals who have broken our nation's immigration laws.
00:04So if they are here illegally, then certainly he is open to deporting them.
00:09And that's what this administration is hard at work at doing.
00:12We receive data from DHS and from ICE every single day.
00:17From what we hear on the ground, ICE agents are feeling incredibly empowered right now
00:20because they actually have a leader in this building who is supporting them in doing their
00:25jobs that they were hired to do, which is to detain, arrest, and deport illegal criminals
00:31who have invaded our nation's borders over the past four years.
00:34That's what the president is committed to seeing.
00:35Peter.
00:36Just following up on the question on immigration first.
00:40President Trump during the course of the campaign in 2024 said the following about illegal immigration.
00:45He said, they're going back home where they belong and we start with the criminals.
00:48There are many, many criminals.
00:50NBC News has learned that ICE arrested 1179 undocumented immigrants on Sunday, but nearly
00:54half of them, 566 of the migrants, appear to have no prior criminal record besides entering
01:01the country illegally.
01:02Is the president still focused exclusively, which is a civil crime, not a, not a, not a,
01:08it's not criminal.
01:09It's a federal crime.
01:10So I'm asking though, he said he was going to focus on those violent offenders first.
01:14So is violent offenders no longer the predicate for these people to be deported?
01:17The president has said countless times on the campaign trail, I've been with him at the
01:21rallies.
01:22We've been there covering them too, Peter, that he is focused on launching the largest
01:26mass deportation operation in American history of illegal criminals.
01:30And if you are an individual, a foreign national who illegally enters the United States of America,
01:35you are by definition a criminal.
01:37And so therefore you are subject to deportation.
01:39I apologize for interrupting.
01:40So to be clear, it's not violent criminals do not receive precedence in terms of the deportations
01:44taking place.
01:45The president has also said two things can be true at the same time.
01:47We want to deport illegal criminals, illegal immigrants from this country, but the president
01:51has said that of course the illegal criminal drug dealers, the rapists, the murderers,
01:58the individuals who have committed heinous acts on the interior of our country and who
02:03have terrorized law-abiding American citizens, absolutely those should be the priority of ICE.
02:08But that doesn't mean that the other illegal criminals who entered our nation's borders are
02:12off the table.
02:13Let me ask you a separate question about the confusion that still exists across the country
02:16right now as it relates to the freeze or the pause as it's described.
02:21President Trump of course ran one of the key policy items was that he was going to lower
02:24prices, lower the cost of everything from groceries, as he often said.
02:28But in many of the cases it would seem that some of these moves could raise prices for real
02:33Americans on everything from low-income heating, that program, childcare programs.
02:37Will nothing that the president's doing here in terms of the freeze in these programs raise
02:42prices on ordinary Americans?
02:44What particular actions are you referring to that would-
02:46I'm referring to LHEAP right now, that's the low-income heating program for example.
02:49We can talk about, there's no clarity, so I could refer to a lot of them, we don't know
02:52what they are specifically.
02:54Can you tell us that LHEAP, that LIHEAP is not one of those affected?
02:57So you're asking a hypothetical based on programs that you can't even identify.
03:01What I can tell you is that-
03:03Well just to be clear, since you guys haven't identified, let's do it together just for Americans
03:06at home.
03:07Medicaid.
03:08Is that affected?
03:09I gave you a list of examples, Social Security, Medicare, welfare benefits, food stamps that
03:16will not be impacted by this federal pause.
03:18I can get you the full list after this briefing from the Office of Management and Budget.
03:22But I do want to address the cost cutting, because that's certainly very important, and
03:27cutting the cost of living in this country.
03:30President Trump has taken historic action over the past week to do that.
03:34He actually signed a memorandum to deliver emergency price relief for American families, which
03:39took a number of actions.
03:40I can walk you through those.
03:42He also repealed many onerous Biden administration regulations.
03:47We know over the past four years, American households has been essentially taxed.