Trump visits border, says he’s ready for emergency
WASHINGTON: The White House is reportedly preparing the ground for the US President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency and has instructed the army’s corps of engineers to look into its appropriations for unspent money to fund the Us-mexico border wall, which he pitched on Thursday during a visit to the border in Texas.
Negotiations with Democrats are stalemated, a compromise package mooted by a group of Republican l awmakers has failed to find traction with the White House, and with few other proposals on the table, talk of a national emergency has gained ground.
Trump himself is not averse to it as he has made it amply clear over the past few days. But he has sought to demonstrate a preference for resolving the stalemate through negotiations, even as he walked out of the last round, ending it with a perfunctory “bye-bye” because it was a “total waste of time”.
“I’m prepared for anything,” he told reporters during his visit t o t he s o ut hern border i n Mcallen, Texas. “We can declare a national emergency.”
During the visit, he sought to drum up support for the wall by doubling down on a narrative of a humanitarian and security crisis, which has been called out repeatedly for exaggeration and misrepresentation of facts, and through emotional endorsements from relatives of victim of crimes by illegal immigrants.
“The way he was killed, what my family’s going through right now, I do not want any other family’s law enforcement person to go through,” said Reggie Singh, brother of Ronil Singh, the Fijian- American police officer killed by an illegal immigrant in California last month. Singh was 33.
Trump’s border visit did not help his case in Washington though, where Democrats controlling the House of Representatives remained opposed to the wall and Republicans who control the Senate saw their compromise package rejected by the US president before it got off the starting block.