Trump: Border ‘like Disneyland’
Scrapping of separation policy brought flood of families, he says
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump took to Fox News Sunday morning to rail against what he said are “the worst immigration laws ever” and “loopholes” in the nation’s immigration system.
Trump said the border is “like Disneyland” now that his administration’s zero-tolerance policy has ended. “Literally, you have 10 times more families coming up because they won’t be separated from their children,” Trump said. “It’s a disaster.”
Trump called in for an interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.” Reporting on the El Paso side of the U.S.-Mexican border, Bartiromo
cut away midway through the interview to show an immigrant family detained by the Border Patrol. Bartiromo suggested the group might not be a real family.
Asked whether immigration changes would be debated or passed in 2019, the president did not give a specific time frame but alluded to meritbased immigration legislation.
“We’re going for a much bigger package. We’re making a plan and talking about immigration laws on a much larger scale,” he said. “We need workers, we’re doing a plan based on merit.”
The president criticized the immigration court system, which faces a large backlog of cases.
“What we need is new laws . ... We have a court system that has 900,000 cases behind it. In other words, they have a court that needs to hear
“It’s just a situation Congress can fix ... and they don’t get off their ass.”
President Donald Trump
900,000 cases,” Trump said. “It’s just a situation Congress can fix ... and they don’t get off their ass.”
Trump did not give any specific policy proposals that would address the issues he raised.
The administration’s attempts to crack down on undocumented immigration have been limited by legal constraints and court injunctions.
The administration had threatened to close the U.S.-Mexican border but backed off at the beginning of April after an outcry from congressional and business leaders.
Trump removed officials at the Department of Homeland Security whom he saw as insufficiently tough on border security, including Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
An attempt to return asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases were adjudicated, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” program, was blocked by a federal judge April 9.