WASHINGTON, March 29, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – President Donald Trump on Thursday
again threatened to seal the US-Mexican border, claiming in a tweet that
America’s southern neighbor is allowing illegal immigrants to cross
unhindered.
“May close the Southern Border!” the president wrote.
“Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our
Country. They are all talk and no action,” he said.
“Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for
years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws.”
The new threat to shut one of the world’s busiest borders, separating two
countries with massive economic and cultural links, shows Trump is doubling
down on his bid to make immigration a keystone of the gathering 2020
reelection campaign.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rejected Trump’s criticism,
telling journalists: “We are doing something on this issue.”
“We are going to help in every way we can. We don’t in any way want a
confrontation with the United States,” he said.
But Lopez Obrador said a solution would depend on “fundamentally addressing
the causes of migration.”
Trump will likely highlight the issue when he hosts a campaign rally in
Michigan later Thursday.
On Wednesday, he referred to the need for more border walls to stop “people
pouring in.”
“Other countries stand there with machine-guns ready to fire. We can’t do
that,” he told Fox News. “We are building massive, many, many miles of walls
right now, and we are gearing up to do many more.”
– ‘Unprecedented’ –
The US border protection agency commissioner, Kevin McAleenan, said
Wednesday that the southwestern frontier faces “an unprecedented humanitarian
and border security crisis.”
The worst spot, he said, is around El Paso, Texas, where agents have
nowhere to put the large numbers of illegal border crossers they detain.
Nationwide, the border agency took in more than 12,000 migrants this week,
it said, while just half that number would be considered already reaching
“crisis level.”
With the agency on track to detain more than 100,000 people in March, “it
would be the highest monthly total in a decade,” the agency said.
Overall, attempts to get across the border into the United States illegally
are down substantially from a decade or more ago.
However, the last year has seen a surge and the general makeup of the
arrivals has changed from single men to families and often small children —
greatly complicating the task of authorities in providing basic services to
detained migrants while their cases are decided.
Migrants are also appearing in greater numbers from Central America, rather
than just Mexico, sometimes traveling in large groups dubbed caravans.
One is currently forming in Honduras, according to Mexico’s interior
minister, Olga Sanchez Cordero. She said it could be “the ‘mother of all
caravans’ and they think it might have more than 20,000 people.”
However, Honduran deputy foreign minister Nelly Jerez said there was “no
indication” of such a group gathering. “We don’t have anything about that.”
– Wall fight –
The last time Trump threatened to close the Mexican border was in December,
when a row over his demand for billions of dollars in wall funding was at its
peak.
Democrats in Congress turned down the funding, arguing that Trump was
exaggerating problems on the border for political gain. In retaliation, Trump
refused to sign wider spending bills, leading to much of the federal
government having to shut down for five weeks.
Trump finally declared a national emergency so that he could bypass
Congress and unlock the money — a move drawing condemnation even from many
of Trump’s Republicans.