Immigration is winning issue for GOP, Trump says
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump sharply accused congressional Democrats of allowing open borders and crime to fester, using a White House event Monday to stoke a fall campaign fight over immigration and the U.S. southern border.
Predicting that Republicans would do “very well in the midterms,” Trump said at an event paying tribute to federal immigration officials that immigration would be a potent issue separating the two parties in the November elections.
“I think we’re going to have much more of a red wave than what you’re going to see as a phony blue wave,” Trump said in the East Room. “Blue wave means crime, it means open borders. Not good.”
The president honored employees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, bringing agents to the lectern to note their achievements in addressing unlawful border crossings and stemming the flow of illicit drugs.
In one instance, he congratulated the work of border agent Adrian Anzaldua on a smuggling bust in Laredo, Texas, inviting him to make some impromptu remarks. Trump said, “You’re not nervous — speaks perfect English.”
The federal agencies overseeing the border and the nation’s immigration system have been thrust into a political debate over the Trump administration’s separation of migrant children from their parents after they illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump said “step by step” he is building his signature border wall but expressed unhappiness with congressional Democrats who have opposed his plan. The president complained of “a coalition of openborders extremists and to me that means crime.”
Trump has assailed some Democratic lawmakers for seeking to abolish ICE. In a letter to state and local leaders before the event, Trump wrote that ICE workers had been subjected to a “nationwide campaign of smears, insults and attacks” by politicians “catering to the extreme elements in our society.”
While some Democrats in the House and Senate have raised the prospect of eliminating ICE, no top Democrats in the House or Senate have called for such a move. Democrats have blasted Trump’s immigration policies along the border, saying they wrongly separate families.
“More than 500 children remain separated from their families as a result of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Instead of addressing this humanitarian crisis that he himself created, Trump continues to ignore the lives he has destroyed and communities he has upended,” said Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Adrienne Watson.