Trump says he has alerted military to 'national emergency' of migrant caravan
Donald Trump has said that he has alerted the military and federal border authorities that a US-bound migrant caravan from Central America was a “national emergency”, and warned that the United States would begin curtailing aid to the region.
A Pentagon spokesman, however, said the Pentagon had received no new orders to provide troops for border security.
Trump, in a series of posts on Twitter, gave no other details about his administration’s actions.
“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States,” Trump wrote in a tweet.
Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018
“Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them,” Trump wrote.
The US president also made an apparently baseless claim that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” with the migrants; journalists traveling with the caravan say that it is composed of Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans.
Migrants in the caravan have said that they are fleeing abject poverty and the violence that has turned the region into one of the most dangerous in the world.
One of the caravan’s organizers, Denis Omar Contreras, from the organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders) said Trump should stop accusing the caravan of harboring terrorists.
“There isn’t a single terrorist here,” he said. “We are all people from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. And as far as I know there are no terrorists in these four countries, at least beyond the corrupt governments.”
Thousands of mostly migrants crowded into the Mexican border city of Tapachula over the weekend after trekking on foot from the Guatemalan border, defying threats by Trump that he would close the US-Mexico border if they advanced, as well as warnings from the Mexican government.
Mexican police in riot gear shadowed the caravan’s arrival along a southern highway but did not impede the migrants’ journey.
Trump, who has made immigration a central part of his platform, earlier threatened to halt aid to the region, and potentially close the US border with Mexico with the help of the military if the migrants’ march is not stopped.
He and his fellow Republicans have sought to elevate the caravan as a campaign issue before the midterm elections that will determine whether the party can maintain its hold of the US Senate and House of Representatives.
Trump travels to Texas, a key border state, later on Monday to campaign for the Republican US senator Ted Cruz. Cruz, who challenged Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and who is seeking re-election.