Trump: Migrants who ‘invade’ US have no right to due process
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Sunday said migrants who ‘invade’ the US should be deprived of legal due process, reinforcing his hardline stand despite an about-face on family separations that has seen more than 500 children reunited with relatives.
Trying to stanch the flow of tens of thousands of migrants from Central America and Mexico arriving at the southern border every month, Trump in early May had ordered that all adults crossing illegally would be arrested, and their children held separately as a result.
After images of children in chain-link enclosures sparked domestic and global outrage, the president ended the separation practice but has continued his hardline talk on immigration.
He sees the issue as crucial ahead of midterm congressional elections in November.
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump said Sunday on Twitter.
We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. Donald Trump, US President
“When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came,” said Trump, suggesting they be handled without the due legal process guaranteed for ‘any person’ by the US Constitution.
Nearly all of the arriving families have officially requested asylum.
“Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order,” said Trump, who has repeatedly tried to link immigrants with crime.
His remarks came after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its first official data since Trump ended the family separations on Wednesday.
It said 522 children separated as part of ‘zero tolerance’ have been reunited with their families, but another 2,053 separated minors remained in the care of the US Department of Health and Human Services as of Wednesday.
“The United States government knows the location of all children in its custody and is working to reunite them with their families,” DHS said in a statement.
On Sunday, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said the military is preparing camps for migrants at two bases, describing it as ‘providing shelter for people without shelter’.
The military is providing ‘logistic support’ for DHS, a ‘quite appropriate’ function for it to do, Mattis said.
Trump’s former deputy national security advisor, Tom Bossert, said the past week had provided ‘terrible optics’ for the administration, and ‘almost from the outset we didn’t have the capacity to detain these parents and children, together or separately’. . — AFP