Trump, critics trade angry charges on immigration
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Democratic critics traded outraged and sometimes false accusations about immigration Tuesday as the debate over “lost” children and the practice of separating families caught crossing the border illegally reached a new boiling point.
False charges flew on both sides. The White House wrongly blamed Democrats for forcing his administration to separate children from parents. Liberal activists tried to highlight the issue by tweeting photos of young people in steel cages that actually were taken during the Obama administration. Others seized on reports the government had “lost” more than 1,000 children, though that wasn’t true.
It all comes before the midterm elections as Republicans and Democrats try to rally core voters by pointing fingers. Trump won the presidency promising to build a wall along the Southern border and end illegal immigration, and the White House believes stressing the same issues will drive voters to the polls and help the GOP hang on to their majorities in the Senate and House.
The White House is “really beating the immigration drum in the lead-up to the midterm elections as a rallying cry and as a way of mobilizing voter support for Trump and the candidates that he chooses,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute and a commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Clinton administration. “It does seem to provoke a ratcheting up across the board.”
During a White House conference call Tuesday, senior adviser Stephen Miller contended the “the current immigration and border crisis” is “the exclusive product of loopholes in federal immigration law that Democrats refuse to close.”
That was after Trump lit up social media over the weekend by falsely claiming there was a “horrible law” that separates children from their parents after they cross the border illegally. He said previously that “we have to break up families” at the border because “the Democrats gave us that law.”
But there’s no law mandating that parents must be separated from their children, and it’s not a policy Democrats have pushed or can change alone as the minority in Congress. The tactic’s increased use is being driven by Trump’s administration, which recently announced a new “zero-tolerance policy” in which it will press criminal charges against all people crossing the border illegally. More children are expected to be separated from their parents as a result.
A Customs and Border Protection official told lawmakers last week that 658 children had been separated from their parents at the border from May 6 to May 19 as the parents face charges.
Congress is heading toward an immigration showdown in the House, as Republican moderates force a June vote on legislation to protect young so-called Dreamer immigrants and beef up border security.
Also making the rounds on social media over the holiday weekend: Allegations that children placed in custody have been “lost” by federal authorities, which officials say isn’t the case.
Officials also said Tuesday they are planning more thorough screening of both minor children and their sponsors, including a fingerprint background check of every sponsor.