President Donald Trump pledged Monday night to begin deporting millions of undocumented immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally and offered uncharacteristic praise for Mexico's efforts to stem the tide of Central American migrants surging across the southern border.
"Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in," Trump wrote on Twitter.
"Mexico, using their strong immigration laws, is doing a very good job of stopping people … long before they get to our Southern Border. Guatemala is getting ready to sign a Safe-Third Agreement," the president continued. "The only ones who won't do anything are the Democrats in Congress. They must vote to get rid of the loopholes, and fix asylum! If so, Border Crisis will end quickly!"
Trump's tweet, which came one day before a planned rally in Orlando, Fla., to kick off Trump's re-election campaign, was a departure from ICE‘s normal practice of keeping enforcement operations closely held until they’ve been executed.
The president's ICE comment comes amid signs of rising concern within his administration about his ability to keep government secrets. One hour after the ICE tweet the president followed with another denying a June 15 New York Times report that Pentagon officials refrained from briefing him in detail on recent U.S. cyberattacks against Russia's power grid "for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister."
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11.29.2024