Trump continues to cast some immigrants as criminals

Making his case for tighter border security, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly linked immigration to criminality, highlighting immigrant gang violence, calling family reunification a national security threat and bemoaning the death of a pro football player involved in a car accident with a man living in the country illegally.

Speaking to law enforcement officials at the White House on Tuesday, Trump singled out the MS-13 gang, which is believed to be behind 25 killings on New York’s Long Island in the past two years, and has become a prime target of the Trump administration.

“We’ve really never seen anything quite like this, the level of ferocity, the level of violence, and the reforms we need from Congress to defeat it,” Trump told law enforcement officials and lawmakers, eventually threatening another federal government shutdown if Democrats don’t agree to pass an immigration package he said would help keep gang members out.

“If we don’t get rid of these loopholes where killers are allowed to come into our country and continue to kill ... if we don’t change it, let’s have a shutdown,” Trump suggested. “I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of.”

Trump’s latest threat is part of a pressure campaign he has been waging to try to get Democrats to sign onto a sweeping immigration plan that they’ve rejected. The president wants billions for a southern border wall, major cuts to legal immigration, and more money for interior enforcement and other changes in exchange for granting a pathway to citizenship for up to 1.8 million young immigrants living in the country illegally.