US: ‘Everything on table’ to block caravan
CALEXICO, CALIFORNIA — Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Friday that “everything is on the table” as the administration considered new measures to stifle immigration at the U.S.Mexico border and send a message that a slow-moving migrant caravan bound for the United States will not be welcome.
“We are looking at every possible way within the legal construct that we have to make sure that those who don’t have legal right to come to this country do not come in,” Nielsen said. The caravan of migrants heading north through Mexico by foot is about 1,000 miles away and dwindling in numbers.
Nielsen spoke after the Pentagon approved a request for additional troops at the southern border, likely to total several hundred to help the U.S. Border Patrol. She made the comments during a visit to Southern California, where she toured the first completed section of President Donald Trump’s 30-foot border wall in the El Centro Sector.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, reiterated that the country needs “a strong, beautiful border.”
“It’s a big caravan,” Trump told a gathering of young black conservative leaders at the White House.
“I called up the military. We’re not letting them in, they ought to go back now because we’re not.”
One of the plans under discussion would use the same mechanism as Trump’s controversial travel ban to block migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S., according to two people familiar with the discussion. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the idea, which they stressed was still in the early planning stages and had yet to be decided.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has signed off on a request for help from the Department of Homeland Security and authorized the military staff to work out details such as the size, composition and estimated cost of the deployments, according to a U.S. official.
Mattis, who is traveling in the Middle East, is expected to approve the actual deployments after all the details are ironed out, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning that has not yet been completed or publicly announced.