US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has called for illegal immigrants to be deported immediately from the United States – without recourse to the American courts system.
Taking to Twitter, where he spent much of the weekend attacking his rivals the Democrats for being unwilling to change US immigration law to make it more effective.
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or court cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and law and order,” the president said.
“Most children come without parents,” he added.
The diatribe comes after a turbulent week for Trump, even by his standards, in which he was forced to back down (to some extent) on his administration’s controversial policy of separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border.
It does not take cognisance of the fact that the vast majority of families arriving at the border have applied officially for asylum within the US.
“Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order,” said Trump, who has repeatedly tried to link immigrants with crime.
His remarks came after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its first official data since Trump ended the family separations last Wednesday.
It said 522 children separated as part of ‘zero tolerance’ have been reunited with their families, but another 2,053 separated minors remained in the care of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
“The United States government knows the location of all children in its custody and is working to reunite them with their families,” DHS said in a statement.
Yesterday, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said the military is preparing camps for migrants at two bases, describing it as “providing shelter for people without shelter”.
The military is providing “logistic support” for DHS, a “quite appropriate” function for it to do, Mattis said.
With © – AFP, 2018
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