Republican Rick Wilson: Trump supporters 'want anyone who's darker than a latte deported'

The Trump administration is back to roughly the same immigration policy as his predecessors.

But not before committing cruel acts that may have been a crime against humanity, and which severally damaged migrant parents and children.

None of it was an accident, Republican strategist Rick Wilson said on CNN Wednesday morning.

"The pictures of the cruelty of this administration are a very deliberate part of this," Wilson said. "They're a feature not a bug of the Trump administration's policy. Nobody inside the Trump administration is unhappy with these things because they're talking to their base, they're only talking to their core supporters, and their core supporters want anyone who's darker than a latte deported."

Wilson said Trump's base opposes immigration of any kind—even though his policies are now basically the same as his predecessors', he gave his base some red meat.

"They don't believe in the asylum process, they want to separate the families as a deterrence, a sort of theater of cruelty," he said. "Stephen Miller and the guys in the white nationalist faction of the party are very happy about this. They love the whole optics of this cruel exercise."

The other panelist, Democratic strategist Steve Trippi, agreed.

"They wanted their base to see this," he said. "They had no intention to return these children to their families, ever, and now they have to, and that's why they're having so much trouble doing it."

Watch below.