Trump pledges ‘NO MORE’ on deal for ‘Dreamers’
PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump, blaming Democrats and the Mexican government for an increasingly “dangerous” flow of unauthorized immigrants, unleashed a series of fiery tweets on Sunday in which he pledged “NO MORE DACA DEAL” and threatened to walk away from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Minutes after wishing the nation a happy Easter Sunday, Trump complained that liberal laws were preventing Border Patrol agents from doing their jobs and said Republicans should use the “nuclear option” to sidestep Democratic opposition in the Senate and enact “tough laws NOW.”
The president, who spent much of his holiday weekend golfing with supporters and watching television, was apparently reacting to a “Fox and Friends” segment on immigration that had aired minutes before. In his tweets, Trump referred to “caravans” of immigrants heading toward the southern border — a subject addressed on the Fox program.
A group of hundreds of Central Americans has been traveling through Mexico toward the United States, where the immigrants hope to seek asylum or sneak across the border. A reporter for BuzzFeed has been traveling with the group as it makes its way north.
As he headed into church in Palm Beach on Sunday, Trump addressed his immigration tweets, saying: “Mexico has got to help us at the border. And a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA.”
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, gave temporary protected status to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, known as “Dreamers.” The program requires immigrants to have resided in the United States since 2007, meaning any crossing the border now would not be eligible.
Trump announced last year that he is ending the program, but courts have blocked his decision. He has been negotiating with Democrats on a legislative solution but seemed in his tweet Sunday to withdraw his support for such talks.
Outside the church, the president said the Democrats “blew it” after having “had a great chance.”
“But we’ll have to take a look,” he added. He did not respond to a question from reporters about whether his tweets meant that he would not support any deal for DACA recipients.
In turning his Twitter ire on Mexico, Trump said the country was “doing very little, if not NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border, and then into the U.S.” He said Mexican leaders “must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA.”