President Donald
Trump again took steps to seal the US-Mexico border on Thursday, guaranteeing
in a tweet that America's southern neighbor is enabling unlawful workers to
pass unchecked.
US President Donald Trump
"May close the
southern border?" Wrote the president.
"Mexico does
NOTHING to prevent illegal immigrants from entering our country. They are all
talking and no action, "he said.
"Likewise,
Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been taking our money for years and
doing nothing. The Dems does not care, as for example the laws of the BAD.
"
The new threat of
closing one of the world's busiest borders and separating two countries with
tremendous economic and cultural ties shows that Trump is doubling its bid to
make immigration a cornerstone of the 2020 re-election campaign.
Mexican President
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rejected Trump's criticism and told journalists:
"We are doing something about this issue."
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
"We will help in
every possible way. We do not want any confrontation with the United States,
"he said.
However, Lopez
Obrador said that one solution depends on "fundamentally addressing the
root causes of migration".
Trump will probably
highlight the subject when he runs a campaign in Michigan on Thursday.
On Wednesday, he
pointed to the need for more frontier walls to stop the "pouring of
people".
"Other countries
are standing there with MGs ready to shoot. We can’t do such, "he told Fox
News. "We are currently building huge, many, many kilometers long walls,
and we are preparing to do much more."
- "Unprecedented"
-
US Department of
Defense Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said Wednesday that the South West border
is facing "an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and border security."
The worst point is in
the area of El Paso, Texas, where agents have nowhere to place the large
number of illegal border guards they detain.
Nationwide, the
Border Agency had taken in more than 12,000 migrants this week, while half of
these respondents were already classified as "crisis level".
With the agency,
which would take more than 100,000 people into custody in March, this would be
"the highest monthly total in a decade," the agency said.
Overall, attempts to
illegally cross the border into the United States have been declining
significantly for a decade or more.
However, the past
year has seen a boom, and the general composition of arrivals has changed from
single men to families and often to small children - making it much harder for
the authorities to provide basic facilities for imprisoned migrants while their
cases are decided.
Migrants are also
more likely to come from Central America than just from Mexico and sometimes
travel in large groups called caravans.
One of them is
currently in Honduras, says Mexican Minister of the Interior Olga Sanchez
Cordero. She said it could be "the" mother of all caravans "and
they believe it could have more than 20,000 people."
However, Honduras
Deputy Foreign Minister Nelly Jerez said there was "no indication" of
such a group gathering. "We have none of this."
- Wall fight -
The last time Trump
threatened to close the Mexican border was in December, when a dispute over his
demand for billions of dollars in wall financing was at its peak.
The Democrats in
Congress rejected the funding and argued that Trump exaggerated border issues
for political reasons. In retaliation, Trump refused to sign more comprehensive
spending bills, resulting in much of the federal government having to close for
five weeks.
Trump at last
announced the national emergency so he could sidestep the congress and open the
cash - a move even denounced by many Trump Republicans.
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