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During a town-hall event in March 2016, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked Trump about his plan to address the hiring of undocumented workers.
“Well, you can do that with E-Verify and the various methods,” Trump told Matthews. He told Matthews that the Trump Organization used the system, which, The Post would later report, wasn’t universally true. The punishment for hiring an undocumented worker? Trump proposed that it should be “a huge financial penalty” — or perhaps a criminal penalty.
Again, it was of a piece with his broader rhetoric: Immigrants should be dissuaded from entering the country illegally, and there should be efforts to curtail their ability to work in the United States to tamp down on illegal immigration. Among the changes the administration implemented to the immigration system last month was a tightening of rules on obtaining work permits.
It was a bit incongruous, then, that Trump said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” that there might be some exceptions made. Trump was asked by the network’s Steve Hilton whether E-Verify would be part of the proposed immigration overhaul Trump unveiled in vague terms last week.
“E-Verify is going to be possibly a part of it,” Trump replied. “The one problem is E-Verify is so tough that in some cases, like farmers, they’re not — they’re not equipped for E-Verify. I mean, I’d say that’s against Republicans. A lot of the Republicans say you go through an E-Verify.”
