President Donald Trump, in the meantime, today claimed “Many Gang Members” and “some very bad people” are mixed into the caravan of migrants slowly moving north through Mexico toward the U.S., calling it an “invasion of Our Country” and that the U.S. military is “waiting for you.”
“Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process,” Trump said on Twitter Monday, according to the Voice of America News.
Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border. Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018
While all the rhetoric over the caravan of folks from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador continues to rachet up via the White House and Trump’s very own news media site, the Pentagon has also changed its plans on troop deployment to the border.
Originally, 1,000 active duty troops were to be deployed, but the plan has changed, with the deployment numbers being increased to 5,000, according to the Department of Homeland Security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the plans before a formal announcement Monday afternoon.
The 5,000 additional troops will join the approximately 2,100 National Guard troops already fanned out across the border. None of the troops will be expected to do law enforcement duty, but will instead back up the Border Patrol, including doing construction of temporary housing, providing medical teams and doing other tedious, menial work. as needed.
Fear of diseases in the caravan
Fox and Friends’ Brian Kilmeade carried on his rant this morning, saying, “What about diseases? I mean, there’s a reason why you can’t bring a kid to school unless he’s inoculated. There are things that happen in this country. We already give 40 to 50 percent of our taxable income to the government for social programs.
“Is it too much to say that we just can’t have countries, entire populations come in here without being looked at as hard-hearted?” he added. “To me, it’s a practical way of having a nation that everyone looks up to and wants to be a part of. That’s part of the reason why America’s America. There’s a process.”
According to the United Nations’ refugee agency. the caravan, which is still many miles away from the U.S.-Mexico border is made up of about 4,000 people, both asylum-seekers and people traveling north for economic reasons. Even though Trump has claimed that “unknown Middle Easterners” are part of the caravan, there’s no evidence to support those claims.
USA Today, along with a number of other news sites, agree that the Trump administration’s ramping up of scare tactics about Central American immigrants being criminals and disease-carriers is in response to the coming mid-term election next week.
To show just how focused the administration is over its need to get votes next week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Friday showed off a recently-completed section of border fence in Calexico, Calif., that including a plaque proclaiming the “completion of the first section of President Trump’s border wall.”
45 is so unbelievably vain he just had a self-commemorating plaque welded on the first miles of new #BorderWall in Calexico. pic.twitter.com/2qhQw5px0u
— Laiken Jordahl (@LaikenJordahl) October 27, 2018
But with all the rigamarole over demands that migrants go through the process of entering this country in the proper and legal manner, which, by the way, is what the folks in the caravan want to do, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan says his agency has no way to speed up the process by which migrants can legally request asylum.
