Trump warns he could ‘close whole Mexico border’ due to illegal immigration
Donald Trump has threatened to close the “whole border” with Mexico if illegal immigration gets “uncontrollable”.
“If we find that it gets to a level where we’re going to lose control or people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control,” Mr Trump said after a Thanksgiving phone call with the US military at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
“We’re either going to have a border or we’re not,” the president said after stationing nearly 6,000 US troops on the border to combat migrants crossing the border without proper documentation.
Mr Trump has been railing against a caravan of approximately 7,000 people slowly making their way towards the US-Mexico border as they flee rampant gang violence and poverty in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
While answering questions from journalists, Mr Trump claimed he had already closed the border before and would do so again - even if meant Mexico could not sell automobiles to American customers.
The US recently signed a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, known as the USMCA, to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and included provisions about automobile sales, but the president did not address in that moment.
“Two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it. We said, ‘Nobody’s coming in.’ Because it’s out of control,” the president said.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said a few traffic lanes in the port of San Ysidro near San Diego, California, had been shut down because a group of migrants “were planning to rush the border”.
The lanes were, however, opened again later that day.
Mr Trump said on Thanksgiving: "You're dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals [among the migrants], so I'm not going to let the military be taken of advantage of. I have no choice. Do I want that to happen? Absolutely not. You're dealing with rough people.”
No evidence has been made public that any of the migrants attempting to enter the US are actually criminals.
Some of these migrants are seeking asylum in the US and, per US law, must set foot on US soil in order to do so.
Mr Trump also took the opportunity at Mar-a-Lago to continue his Twitter rant about the federal appeals court in San Francisco, which ruled against his asylum policy and said the administration must allow all those seeking the protected status to apply regardless of where they came from or how they entered the country.
The court in question has blocked a number of border and immigration orders from Mr Trump during his presidency and the president had previously tweeted that "judges must not legislate security ...They nothing about it and are making our country unsafe." He said that such decisions would only lead to "bedlam, chaos, injury and death".
He later called the ninth circuit court "a big thorn in our side" and said "judges or Congress need to do something to stop it".
