Donald Trump called on Sunday for the US to abandon its judicial system and summarily deport people who enter the country.
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The president attacked the rule of law amid sustained criticism of his administration’s handling of immigration at the southern border.
“When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came,” Trump said in a tweet, while being driven to his golf course in Virginia.
The statement amounted to a proposal for the suspension of law by the country’s chief law enforcement officer. Any attempt to implement such a demand would face strong opposition from political opponents and civil rights activists.
Trump was last week pushed to halt a policy of separating families suspected of entering the US illegally, in a dramatic political climbdown. More than 2,300 children had been taken from their parents by US officials, prompting an international humanitarian outcry.
The president continued to use the language of the far-right to describe immigrants on Sunday, declaring in his tweet that the US “cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country”. He warned last week that immigrants could “infest” the US.
At the same time, his administration moved to ease fears that separated families may never be reunited, insisting that all detainees were being tracked through an identification system and that the situation was under control.
Some children have been reunited with parents. According to a release from the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday, 2,053 minors who were separated at the border were being cared for in facilities run by the Department of Heath and Human Services.
But Washington has been thrown into chaos by Trump’s erratic actions. Having created the child separation crisis with a “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, Trump falsely said his administration was merely following a law Democrats in Congress needed to help to change.
After saying he could not stop the policy by executive order, he then stopped the policy with an executive order, confirming that he had been lying. But Trump has continued to demand action from Congress. When Congress promptly produced such plans, Trump dismissed them and instructed Republicans to stop negotiating.
Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of a handful of Republicans in Congress willing to criticise the president, urged Trump to stop falsely accusing Democrats of being unwilling to agree to a comprehensive immigration law unless it effectively opened the border.
“They are on record supporting significant border control,” Flake said on ABC’s This Week. “So when the president says that, and calls them ‘clowns’ and ‘losers’, how does he expect Democrats to sit down and work with Republicans on these issues?”
Bob Corker of Tennessee, who like Flake is retiring from the Senate this year, also called for an end to the demonisation of immigrants, which has become a powerful political force in the party.
“We’ve got to realise these people are wanting to live in a place like we live,” Corker said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “We’re the most fortunate people on earth to live in this country. That’s why people are drawn to us.”
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On Saturday, groups of Democratic lawmakers toured detention facilities in Texas and elsewhere. Some called for a clear plan for reunifying separated families.
Democrats also accused Trump of confecting a crisis, as illegal immigration to the US has fallen. According to US officials, 310,531 people were apprehended entering the US illegally last year, compared with more than 1.6m in 2000.
“He uses it as a issue in order to energise his political base,” Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois said on ABC.
Trump confirmed in a speech on Saturday that he believes his hardline stance on immigration will be politically beneficial in November’s midterm elections.
“I like the issue for [the] election,” Trump said to a party gathering in Las Vegas, where he continued to associate Hispanic immigrants in general with MS-13, a criminal gang that operates in Mexico and central America.
