Trump Weighs Executive Order to Shut Southern Border to Migrants: Report
DRASTIC MEASURES
As Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen promises U.S. troops won’t shoot at migrants crossing the border “right now.”
Adrees Latif/Reuters
President Trump is weighing an executive order to close the southern border to migrants, including asylum seekers, as part of a push to rally supporters ahead of the midterm elections, The New York Times reports. Sources familiar with the plan quoted by the Times said the details are still being worked out, but if Trump goes ahead with it, he will invoke the same part of immigration law used in last year’s chaotic travel ban to bar foreigners from entering the U.S. on national security grounds. Three sources cited in the report said Trump may issue a proclamation on the executive action on Tuesday, a week before the midterm elections. Reports of the plan came shortly after Trump declared on Twitter that he was “bringing out the military” to deal with a migrant caravan heading for the U.S. border, which he described as a “national emergency.” Amid reports that Trump is sending up to 1,000 U.S. Army troops to the U.S-Mexico border to stop any influx of migrants, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen late Thursday offered vague reassurances on the plan in comments to Fox News. “We do not have any intention right now to shoot at people, but they will be apprehended, however,” Nielsen said, adding that officers “do have the ability of force to defend themselves” if they need to.
