Trump orders border cells & an end to catch-release

President Trump has called for new detention facilities along the Mexican border and an end to the Obama administration’s “catch and release” policy on illegal immigrants.

“We are sealing up our Southern Border. The people of our great country want Safety and Security,” he tweeted on Saturday. “The Dems have been a disaster on this very important issue!”

Trump issued a memo Friday night instructing the Department of Homeland Security to end the policy that allows illegal border crossers to remain free in the US as they await judicial hearings that could deport them.

Under the directive, the DHS and other agencies must “allocate all le-

gally available resources to construct, operate, control, or modify . . . facilities to detain aliens for violations of immigration law at or near the borders.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the measures Friday night, calling catch-and-release a “dangerous practice” and saying Trump was committed to “the safety and security of the American people”

The federal government uses 109 facilities across the country to hold about 40,000 immigrants threatened with deportation, including six in New Jersey and one in upstate Orange County.

More than a third of the centers — which include county jails, lockups run by private contractors, and ICE facili- ties — are clustered along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California. But they have far too little space for the 300,000 border crossers apprehended in the Southwest in 2017 alone.

Trump’s memo could add an unspecified number of holding areas, including some in modified or repurposed military facilities.