MIGRANT CARAVAN: TRUMP VOWS TO CUT CENTRAL AMERICA AID
US president says it is a national emergency, alerts border patrol and military
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said on Monday he has told the US military and border authorities that a migrant caravan heading toward the United States from Central America represented a national emergency, as he vowed to cut aid to the region.
“Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them,” Trump wrote in a series of posts on Twitter.
Since Trump became president last year, the United States has already moved to sharply decrease aid to Central America.
In 2016, the United States provided some $131.2 million in aid to Guatemala, $98.3 million to Honduras, and $67.9 million to El Salvador, according to official US data. By next year, those sums were projected to fall to $69.4 million for Guatemala, $65.8 million for Honduras, and $45.7 million in the case of El Salvador. Combined, the cuts amount to a reduction of almost 40 per cent for the three nations.
Thousands of mostly Honduran migrants crowded into the Mexican border city of Tapachula over the weekend after trekking on foot from the Guatemalan border, defying threats by Trump that he will close the Us-mexico border if they advanced, as well as warnings from the Mexican government.
Mexican police in riot gear shadowed the caravan’s arrival along a southern highway but did not impede the migrants’ journey.
“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States,” Trump wrote in a tweet, adding: “I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy.” Trump, who has taken a hard line toward illegal immigration since taking office last year, gave no other details about his administration’s actions.
Representatives for the Pentagon and the US State Department referred questions to the White House.
Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to elevate the caravan as a campaign issue ahead of the November 6 congressional elections in which his party is fighting to maintain control of the US Senate and House of Representatives. Congress has failed to fully fund Trump’s proposed wall along the Us-mexican border, which he has argued is needed to combat illegal immigration.
In April, Trump raised the prospect of sending military forces to the Us-mexico border to stop illegal immigrants, raising questions in Congress and among legal experts about troop deployments on US soil.
A 19th-century federal law restricts using the Army and other main branches of the military for civilian law enforcement on American soil, unless specifically authorised by Congress. But the military can provide support services to law enforcement and has done so since the 1980s.