While doubling down on his campaign stance of deporting illegal migrants, US President-elect Donald Trump says he wants immigrants to come in legally.

“We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, and we have to — at the same time, we want people to come into our country,” he said in an interview with NBC, his first since his election to a second term.

“I’m not somebody that says, ‘no, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in,” he said. When the interviewers asked him about the cost of mass deportation of illegal migrants, he said, “It’s not a question of a price tag. When people have killed and murdered when drug lords have destroyed countries… there is no price tag.”

Trump said in his interview with two journalists from the network that his mandate is “to bring common sense” to the country. “You can’t have ‘defund the police’, these kind of things. They don’t want to give up and they don’t work, and the people understand that,” he added.