President-elect Donald Trump said he has no desire to separate immigrant families while defending his sweeping mass deportation plans Sunday.

During a contentious NBC News interview, Trump said families with a mixture of legal and illegal residents can leave the United States "together," echoing a proposal from his border czar Tom Homan.

"I don't want to send the family out. I don't want to send anybody out. But I'll tell you, we have to because otherwise we have no country," he told NBC's Kristen Welker.

Trump on separating families

Throughout his first term, Trump faced outrage over his "zero-tolerance" immigration policy, which led to some illegal aliens being separated from their children.

When asked if he plans to revive the policy, Trump said America has no option but to maintain an orderly immigration system governed by "rules and regulations."

"When somebody comes here illegally, they're going out. It's very simple," Trump said.

"The family has a choice"

Whether mass deportations result in families being separated will be up to the families impacted, Trump emphasized.

“If they come here illegally but their family is here legally, then the family has a choice: The person that came in illegally can go out or they can all go out together."

While America gave Trump a mandate to pursue his hardline immigration agenda, he anticipated a media backlash and the possibility of a shift in public opinion down the line.

“I’ll tell you what’s going to be hard — when we take a wonderful young woman who’s with a criminal, and they show the woman and she could stay by the law, but they show the woman being [deported] … and then the public turns against us,” he said.

Ending birthright citizenship

At the same time, Trump said he would be open to negotiating a legislative solution for so-called "Dreamers" who entered the country illegally as children.

“The Dreamers are going to come later, and we have to do something about the Dreamers, because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age, and many of these are middle-aged people now,” Trump said.

The president-elect also suggested a long-term fix to the legal and ethical conundrum of deporting illegal aliens with children who are citizens. Namely, Trump said he would end the "ridiculous" policy of birthright citizenship, which allows anyone who sets "one foot" on American soil to gain a legal foothold by having children.

"Do you know if somebody sets a foot, just a foot, one foot, you don’t need two, on our land, 'Congratulations you are now a citizen of the United States of America.' Yes, we’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous," he said.