Trump mulling new immigration curbs
Aide says ‘the whole world will soon see that Trump will not be questioned’
US President Donald Trump was expected to unveil new measures on immigration as early as yesterday in the name of keeping Americans safe, with a top aide insisting he did not overstep his authority with his controversial travel ban.
With the ban now frozen by a federal appeals court pending further legal review, Trump is “considering and pursuing all options,” presidential aide Stephen Miller told Fox News Sunday.
He denounced federal judges who have stood in the way of Trump’s controversial travel ban, warning that “the whole world will soon see” that the president’s executive powers “will not be questioned”.
“We have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government,” Miller, a senior adviser to Trump on immigration issues, said.
“Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”
The White House could either file an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, defend the merits of the order in lower courts or issue a new executive order.
“We are contemplating new and additional actions to ensure that immigration is not a vehicle for admitting people into our country that are hostile to its nation and its values,” Miller said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “There’s no such thing as judicial supremacy. What the judges did is take power away that belongs squarely in the hands of the president of the United States.”
While the fate of Trump’s restrictions on refugees and travellers from seven Muslimmajority countries plays out in the courts, a separate executive order prioritising the deportation of undocumented migrants paved the way for the arrest of hundreds of people, many of them Latinos, this past week. Thousands of protesters in more than a dozen Mexican cities took to the streets on Sunday to express their fierce opposition to US President Donald Trump, portraying the new leader as a menace to both America and Mexico.
Waving Mexicans flags and hoisting anti-Trump signs in both Spanish and English, some vulgar, many protesters also heaped scorn on their own president, deriding Enrique Pena Nieto as a weak leader who has presided over rampant corruption and violence at home.
Trump and Pena Nieto have been locked in battle over their countries’ deep ties for months, even before Trump won the presidency with promises to get tougher on immigration and trade from Mexico.
Mexico fears Trump’s policies could send Latin America’s second biggest economy into crisis. In a rare display of national unity, marchers and organisers came from across the country’s deeply polarised political factions, encouraged in part by a pro-march ad campaign by Televisa, the country’s dominant broadcaster.
Local officials estimated that a total 30,000 marched in the country’s two largest cities, Mexico City and Guadalajara. “He’s such a bad man and he shouldn’t act the way he does,” said 62-year-old marcher Jorge Ruiz about Trump.