EL PASO (Texas,US) — President Donald Trump takes his politically explosive push for walling off the Mexican border to the frontier city of El Paso, days before a deadline for Congress to meet his demands.
“Will be heading to El Paso very soon. Big speech on Border Security and much else tonight (Monday Feb 11). Tremendous crowd! See you later!” he tweeted.
According to Trump, illegal immigrants pose a national security risk to the United States and can only be stopped by dramatic extensions of current barriers.
It’s an argument he backs up with lurid warnings about rapists and people traffickers extending far into the American heartland – a message that critics describe as blatantly xenophobic and based on heavily manipulated data.
Trump chose El Paso as a historic crossing point where, he says, walls have eradicated an out-of-control influx of criminals from Mexico and made the city a model for what could happen elsewhere on the border.
But there’ll be a counter-message a short distance from where Trump speaks when rising Democratic star Beto O’Rourke – a possible challenger to Trump in 2020 – holds his own rally.
“Tonight, we will meet lies and hate with the truth and a positive, inclusive, ambitious vision for the future from the US-Mexico border,” he tweeted.
Trump dismissed O’Rourke’s impact, saying in the White House that a “tiny” crowd would attend the Democrat’s event, while as many as 75,000 people had registered for his.
Trump has been leading chants of “build the wall” at rallies since his 2016 election campaign and that is sure to continue up to 2020.
Trump has failed to persuade Congress to fund his wall project, with Democrats accusing the president of using the whole issue to boost his political base, rather than fix the complex border situation.
Trump has fought back. In December, he pushed back at Congress by refusing to fund swaths of the government, leading to a five week shutdown of some 800,000 federal jobs. Now, Congress has until Friday to come up with the wall money or Trump says he could impose another shutdown.
The president is demanding US$5.7 billion for the project.
Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, and Trump’s Republicans, who control the Senate, reported a setback over the weekend, with both sides haggling over the amount of potential money and what exactly it would be spent on.
Trump could either hit back with a new shutdown or declare a national emergency, giving himself power to take the money from the military, although this would likely provoke lawsuits and even more political recriminations. — NNN-AGENCIES
