Trump touts rising U.S. border 'wall,' proposes economic penalty on Mexico
  • WORLD

  • 07:38 06 April 2019

Trump touts rising U.S. border 'wall,' proposes economic penalty on Mexico

President Donald Trump on Friday promised approximately 450 miles (725 km) of new “wall” along the southern U.S. border, after threatening to slap Mexico with an unspecified economic penalty to crack down on what he describes as a crisis of undocumented immigration and drug trafficking, ONA reports citing Reuters.

Referring to a “colossal surge” of immigrants, Trump convened a discussion with immigration officials and local leaders in Calexico on the U.S.-Mexico border just north of the much larger city of Mexicali.

Before touring a just completed 30-foot (9 meter) tall, 2.2 mile (3.5 km) barrier at Calexico, Trump said more U.S. military resources will be dispatched to the border.

“Our country is full,” Trump said in a warning to migrants. “Can’t take you anymore.

The Republican president’s latest pronouncements, including a threat to impose auto tariffs on Mexico, are in response to a rising number of migrants, many of them families with children, traveling northward from Central America through Mexico and to the U.S. border.

During Friday’s discussion in Calexico, Trump was handed a diamond-shaped piece of steel slate - the material used to construct barriers along the border.

Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that by the end of next year - just after the November 2020 presidential election - about 450 miles (725 km) of new barrier will be completed. Border officials have said they need 722 miles (1,162 km) of new or replacement barriers.

Trump is counting on seizing funds from other federal accounts and shifting them for the construction, a move being challenged in federal court because Congress has not given approval. Democrats generally oppose Trump’s wall proposal, suggesting instead other types of enhanced border security that they argue would be more effective and less costly.

Hammering on a favorite theme, Trump earlier on Friday said he was considering imposing an unspecified economic penalty on Mexico unless it helps alleviate the United States’ drug and immigrant flows.

Although Trump has several times linked the issues of illegal immigration and drug smuggling as he tries to tighten border security, much of the drug trade is not carried out by migrants but by professional crime gangs that send narcotics to the United States in vehicles through official ports of entry.

Praising Mexico for moving recently against drug traffickers, Trump said, “If they continue that, everything will be fine. If they don’t we’re going to tariff their cars at 25 percent.”

“Also, I’m looking at an economic penalty for all of the drugs that are coming in through the southern border and killing our people,” Trump told reporters in Washington before departing for southern California.

Faig Mahmudov

Tags: Trump U.S. Mexican border

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