Trump escalates immigration rhetoric
HUEHUET, Mexico — US President Donald Trump said on Monday the United States will start cutting aid to three Central American countries as a caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rolled on toward the US border.
The United Nations said more than 7,000 people were now heading toward the US, as more migrants joined the original group, including some Central Americans who were already in Mexico.
Trump, meanwhile, kept up his almost-daily Twitter attacks on the caravan, calling it a national emergency and saying he had alerted the US border patrol and military.
“We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid” that the US gives Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, said the president — who has seized on the crisis in the run-up to US midterm elections, reviving the immigrant-bashing rhetoric that helped get him elected in 2016.
If Trump should follow through with his threat to end or greatly reduce US aid, that could worsen the poverty and violence that are a root cause of the migration he has been railing against, critics said.
“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in,” he said.
Trump’s tweets marked the latest escalation of his efforts to thrust immigration politics into the national conversation in the closing weeks of the congressional elections.
He and his senior aides have long believed the issue which was a centerpiece of his winning presidential campaign is key to revving up his base and motivating GOP voters to turn out in November.
“Blame the Democrats,” he wrote. “Remember the midterms.”
With the election drawing near, Trump’s focus on immigration comes as he seeks to counter Democratic enthusiasm. Trump believes that his campaign pledges, including his much-vaunted — and stillunfulfilled — promise to quickly build a US-Mexico border wall are still rallying cries.
At a rally at the Toyota center in Houston late on Monday, Trump told a crowd of nearly 180,000 that the caravan of migrants heading toward the US is “an assault on our country” and that “we need a wall built fast”.
A Pentagon spokesman, Jamie Davis, said the Pentagon had received no new orders to provide troops for border security. And a State Department official said the agency had not been given any instructions on eliminating or reducing aid to Central American countries.
Mexico’s Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete vowed his country would not bow to “any government that intends to provoke a hostile reaction in Mexico”, saying leaders there would “continue to call for dialogue”.
Mexican authorities had managed to block the migrants on border with Guatemala after they burst through a series of barriers on Friday. But many later crossed the river in makeshift rafts before marching north.
The caravan resumed its journey on Monday in the state of Chiapas, setting out from Tapachula, near the border, for the town of Huixtla, around 40 kilometers away.