Trump: Migrants who throw stones could be shot
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said members of the US military sent to the southern border to keep out thousands in a migrant caravan would “fight back” if immigrants throw stones and suggested soldiers might open fire on the group because there’s “not much difference” between a rock or gun, according to a report in USA Today.
Trump said on Thursday he was finalizing a plan that would require immigrants seeking asylum in the US to approach a legal port of entry, pushing a hard line on immigration ahead of next week’s congressional elections.
Trump pointed to reports of a clash between authorities and the caravan as they moved across the Guatemalan border to Mexico.
Mexico authorities said migrants attacked its agents with rocks, glass bottles and fireworks when they broke through a gate on the Mexican end but were pushed
back, according to the Associated Press.
It’s unclear whether any Mexican authorities were injured but Guatemalan officers were hurt.
Trump said the US military wouldn’t accept bottles or stones being thrown at them, the USA
Today reported. “They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back,” the president told reporters. “I told them to consider it a rifle. When they throw rocks like what they did to the Mexican military and police I say consider it a rifle.”
Trump continued, claiming members of the military were “badly hurt” by migrants armed with stones. He said any stone will be considered a “firearm because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.”
Trump has ramped up his tough stance on illegal immigration, an issue that appeals to his core supporters, before elections on Tuesday that will determine whether his fellow Republicans can keep control of Congress.
In recent days, he has sought to present as a threat to the US a large group of migrants from Central America who have left poverty and violence at home and are heading slowly through Mexico toward the US border.
”These illegal caravans will not be allowed into the US and they should turn back now,” Trump said. “We are stopping people at the border. This is an invasion.”
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, an ally of the president, echoed some of the president’s strong rhetoric about the caravan in a letter to the secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
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