Trump blames Democrats for migrant children’s death
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump blamed opposition Democrats for the death of two immigrant children in US custody, comments set to heighten tensions as the second week of a government shutdown began over his demands for a wall on the USMexico border.
“Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try!,” Trump said on Twitter.
His comments came after the separate deaths of two Guatemalan children, aged seven and eight, who crossed the border illegally with relatives who were taken into custody by US Border Patrol.
The tweet hardened Trump’s tone after an earlier message on Twitter that said the next move in the eight- day budget standoff over border wall funding belonged to the Democrats.
“I am in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come on over and make a deal on Border Security,” Trump tweeted.
But members of Congress, most of them home for the holidays, kept low profiles, and there were no evident signs of any imminent breakthrough.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was in Yuma, Arizona, on a trip to witness border operations first hand after saying last week that the US will take ‘extraordinary’ protective measures to deal with a surge of immigrant children in custody.
Eight-year- old Felipe Gomez, who collapsed after running a fever, died in US custody after traveling with his father Agustin Gomez from an indigenous community in Guatemala.
He died on the same day that Jakelin Caal, a Guatemalan girl who died in US custody under similar circumstances earlier this month, was buried back in her home village.
Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try!
In the last two months, US Border Patrol agents have apprehended 139,817 people on the southwest border, compared with 74,946 during the same period a year earlier, Nielsen said.
More than 68,500 were ‘ family units’ while almost 14,000 others were unaccompanied children, she said, and the system has been pushed to the ‘breaking point.’
When the shutdown began on Dec 22, affecting a quarter of
Donald Trump, US President
the federal government, Trump canceled his plans to spend the year- end holidays in Florida and vowed to remain at the White House – though he made a quick, unannounced trip to visit US troops in Iraq.
But as he tries to build pressure on Democrats to help fund the border wall he sees as an urgent priority – threatening even to close the border if no deal is reached – Democrats appear adamant in their refusal to pay for a project they view as a waste of money. — AFP