Taking to Twitter this Sunday, President Donald Trump declared his willingness to shut down the United States government in order to secure funding for a wall along the border.
Displaying his usual belligerent attitude, the President issued a series of demands via his Twitter account, and included his statement showing support for a government shutdown.
“I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!,” said Trump. “Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!”
The President’s attitudes on immigration, as well as his insistence on a wall along the southern border, were hallmarks of his campaign, and themes he regularly returns to.
In recent months, the president has moved to make immigration far more difficult that it already is, including separating families seeking asylum, often shipping children of immigrant parents to separate facilities.
In spite of a court order in place requiring the administration to reunite these children, 711 remain separated. In many cases, children were separated under questionable circumstances, with parents signing away reunification rights without understanding what it was they were signing.
Deflecting from reports of widespread abuse and neglect in the hastily set-up immigrant youth shelters dotting the country, Trump tweeted that, “there are consequences when people cross our Border illegally, whether they have children or not – and many are just using children for their own sinister purposes.”
The tweets seem to go hand in hand with reports of the ill treatment of children in the shelters, including a blistering report from ProPublica on sexual abuse cases reported in these sites.
Trump then turned this into an attack on congress, demanding they work to fix ” DUMBEST & WORST immigration laws anywhere in the world” before demanding people “Vote ‘R.'”
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license