June 25, 2018

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump said yesterday on Twitter.

US President Donald Trump has said that migrants who “invade” the United States should be deprived of legal due process, reinforcing his hard-line stand, despite an about-face on family separations that has seen more than 500 children reunited with their relatives.

Trying to stop the flow of thousands of migrants from Central America & Mexico arriving at the southern border each month, Trump in early May had ordered that all the adults crossing illegally would be arrested & their children held separately as a result.

After images of children in chain-link enclosures sparked domestic & global outrage, Trump ended the separation practice but has continued his hardline talk on immigration.

He sees this issue as crucial ahead of the midterm congressional elections in November this year.

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump tweeted yesterday.

“When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came,” said Donald Trump, suggesting they be handled without the due legal process guaranteed for “any person” by the US Constitution.

Nearly all the arriving families have officially requested for asylum.

“Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy & Law and Order,” said Trump, who has again and again tried to link immigrants with crime.

His remarks came after the Department of Homeland Security released its 1st official data since President Trump ended the family separations on Wednesday.

It said that 522 children separated from their parents as part of “zero tolerance” have been reunited with their families, but more than 2,000 separated minors still remained in the care of the US Department of Health and Human Services as of Wednesday.

“The United States govt. knows the location of all children in its custody & is working to reunite them with their families,” the Dept. said in a statement late Saturday.

Fleeing from impoverished Central America, the arrivals say they're seeking a better life and also a refuge from criminal gangs terrorizing their region, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates.

Central American migrants deported from the US without their children have spoken of their anguish at seeing families split under the “zero tolerance” approach.

Appalling accounts of immigrants

Ever Sierra, deported after trying to enter the US, told AFP he planned to try again in a few days.

He arrived back in Honduras with his 8-month-old daughter’s shoes hanging from his backpack. She was being held in a detention centre in McAllen, Texas, along with her mother.

Benjamin Raymundo, a 33 years old deported back to Guatemala, told AFP he left his home country in April with his 5 years old son Roberto, but the pair were separated when immigration officers in California stopped them.

Later the boy was placed in a relative’s custody.

“It’s a great sadness for me, as if I’ll never see my son again,” Raymondo lamented.

Trump’s former deputy National Security Advisor, Tom Bossert, said the past 1 week had provided “terrible optics” for administration & “almost from the outset we did not have the capacity to detain these parents & children, together or separately.”

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Bossert predicted that Trump’s executive order ending the family separations will not stand up in Court because a judge had ruled in 2015 that even detaining parents & children together is “inhumane.”

US lawmakers yesterday spoke of the need for a longer-term solution. But in a poisoned political climate, they have failed to advance either of 2 Republican immigration bills in the House of Representatives, which the Republicans control along with the Senate.

A hardline proposal was defeated last week, as expected & a vote on a “compromise” bill between the party’s hard-right & moderate factions has been pushed back, with signs it couldn't pass.

Trump & other hardline Republicans accuse opposition Democrats of being soft on crime & immigration.

Source HT

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