“I think it’s arguably the best day of his campaign,” said Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative. “From beginning to end, he had all eyes on him, he did the totally unexpected in going to Mexico, he had by all accounts a very successful trip, then he came back to a rally and gave an exhaustingly specific policy speech on immigration.”

Last week, as Trump deemphasized deportation and publicly mused about what to do about otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants who had been living in America for years—a sharp departure from his calls for a deportation force– some conservative critics slammed his ruminations for smacking of “amnesty.”

“He said some things last week, that he had sympathy for people who have been here a long time, he didn’t want to be breaking up families,” said Roy Beck, the president of NumbersUSA, which advocates for lower immigration levels but, he said, doesn’t encourage mass deportations. “He made clear tonight that the top priority needs to be the American workers. That was excellent.”