Trump White House doubles down on the threat to close U.S.-Mexico border

MARCH 31, 2019

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The Trump administration on Sunday warned anew that it is on the verge of closing the U.S.-Mexico border and cutting aid to three Central American nations in response to an escalating humanitarian crisis as thousands of migrants, primarily families with children, are presenting themselves at ports of entry and asking for political asylum.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on ABC News’s “This Week” that it would take “something dramatic” in the coming days to persuade President Trump not to close the border.

Such a move would have dramatic consequences for families seeking asylum and would seriously impede U.S.-Mexico trade.

Under U.S. law, people who reach the U.S. border are entitled to request asylum. But in recent months, the number of arrivals has spiked and is now at about 100,000 people a month.

This has overwhelmed the system. The immigration courts have backlogs of hundreds of thousands of cases.

There is profound partisan disagreement over how to handle it. Trump continues to press for a border wall and wants to take money from military projects to build new barriers. Meanwhile, the State Department said Saturday that it would end assistance programs for the “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the source of the bulk of the migrant arrivals.

Democrats have pushed for facilities to handle incoming families and have excoriated the Trump administration for separating migrant children from their parents under a now-rescinded policy.

“Democrats didn’t believe us a month ago, two months ago when we said what was happening at the border was a crisis, a humanitarian crisis, a security crisis,” Mulvaney said on ABC News. He said the administration is talking about closing the border because “we need the people from the ports of entry to go out and patrol in the desert, where we don’t have any wall.”

He also called on the Mexican government to solidify its southern border and said Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador need to do more to prevent their citizens from entering Mexico. If they can’t do that, he said, “it makes very little sense for us to continue to send them aid.” He made similar remarks in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), appearing on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” said, “When the president says he’s going to close the border, that is a totally unrealistic boast on his part. What we need to do is focus on what’s happening in Central America.”

Durbin said the government needs to prioritize the humanitarian crisis unfolding along the U.S.-Mexico border:

“The first thing we need to do is meet the humanitarian needs at the border instead of building fences two or three years in the future by taking money from Department of Defense, focus on facilities to serve these families so that there aren’t children who are hurt and dying as a result of this situation.”

Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to implore Mexico to “stop the many thousands of people trying to get into the USA.” He wrote: “Our detention areas are maxed out & we will take no more illegals. Next step is to close the Border! This will also help us with stopping the Drug flow from Mexico!”

The president told reporters on Friday, “If they don’t stop them, we are closing the border. We’ll close it. And we’ll keep it closed for a long time. I’m not playing games.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Trump’s threat “certainly isn’t a bluff.” When host Chris Wallace said that cutting off aid — including programs designed to curb gang violence — would make matters worse in Central America, she said that “the conditions are already awful” and urged Congress to act.

“The executive branch has done so much to try to mitigate these awful circumstances, and we need to send a message back to these countries, too . . . You know that we’ve interdicted drugs through the ports of entry, outside of the points of entry, enough fentanyl to kill every American in this country. And people are just denying what they should see in front of them.”