Protesters hold signs during a silent protest of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Sioux City, Iowa, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015. Hundreds of students, parents and other Sioux City residents protested Trump’s appearance at a northwestern Iowa high school on Tuesday, saying the Republican presidential candidate’s rhetoric about immigrants violates the school’s anti-bullying policy. JUSTIN WAN/SIOUX CITY JOURNAL VIA AP
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposal to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is unrealistic and would cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars.
In an interview Thursday with ABC News, Obama suggests imagining the images on screens flashed around the world as parents are dragged away from their children, put in detention centers and systematically sent out of the country.
He says that’s not “who we are as Americans.”
READ: Republican rivals rip Trump’s immigration plan
Trump has said the US can successfully and humanely deport the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally with a deportation force.
Obama attributes cheers for the plan to a strain of anti-immigrant sentiment in American. He says it’s the job of leaders not to play into that sentiment.
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